Hey there, I was sitting at me computer desk today looking up something for the 100th time and a question came to mind. For those who have been coding for a while, or even just for a few months. How much you do you remember of what you learned? For example, I spent a lot of time brushing up on my JavaScript and felt comfortable using it. However, I then looked back on to my CSS and realized that it was not so clear anymore. I then spent time focusing on CSS recently and now I look at my JavaScript and again its not as clear as when I was working on it everyday. A challenge for me unit recently, was that for some reason I had to know all of this by heart. I actually got discouraged that I would not make it in a development role because I could not remember all of this. Now, I can say that was silly of me as I have heard from tons of developers that they have to search for stuff all the time. Not sure, if anyone else has this problem but even now I had to search for the answer of the last question I asked here, and I think that has made me more confident. What about you? Do you find yourself looking up things that you may have done all the times before?
I constantly Google documentation. Heck, I constantly Google the documentation on software I have written. Why memorize things that I can look up?
Unfortunately, it took me a while to come to this realization that it is impossible to memorize all of this. There is a endless amount of stuff out there, and new things are being added all the time.
Hi, I am new here. I have been learning for the past 2 months and started with my first project yesterday. Today I wanted to give up for this same reason because I thought I would not make it sisnce I was struggling and kept having to go back to challenges and google stuff. But not anymore. You have given me hope because I thought I would fail because I could not remember how to do the stuff I learned. I feel better knowing that season developers don’t remeber everything either.
I am glad this helped you, and glad that you realized this before me. Trust me, I use to start and stop coding all the time. I always wonder where my skills would be if I never stopped in the first place, but that’s in the past now. This stuff does take time, and can be overwhelming for sure but the best thing you can do is to keep working on it. I have several friends who are developers, and I use to follow developers on social media. Every single one of them said they have to go and search something on a regular basis. It is impossible to memorize all this stuff. Now, I dont hesitate to come on here or other forums if I have a question. I dont care if the members get sick of me, I want to learn and the best way to learn is to ask questions if you’re stuck.
Currently studying software development at university, and my experience is gathered here from FCC. I can honestly say that I look up stuff on the Java documentation on a daily basis, even for “basic” things as to look up the size of lists/arrays.
To be completely honest I think that those of my classmates who are struggling the most are those who are not used to googling every answer. Those who think they need to say “oh yeah of course” every time they see a question or have a problem, those are the ones who struggle the most. If you learn how to read the documentation for a programming language, or know what resources you have available when googling (and which writes the help in a way you understand it), then you are already far ahead!
Exactly, I am working on a little projects with html, css and a little bit of js right now and I had to go look up onClick events to make sure I was doing it right. I think a lot of people are more worried about memorizing instead of understanding. I was definitely one of those people who spent hours trying to memorize, but then when it came time to use the code it wouldnt work. Even looking something up, it gives you the answer but a person still needs the understanding of how that code works. Which, has made all the difference to me when it comes to writing code.
Saw this linked on Twitter yesterday, could probably be posted as a stock answer to all similar questions tbh:
Everyone Googles, as there are so much of info in coding; it’s humanly impossible to remember each and every thing except fundamental concepts.
I suggest to try out flash cards if you’ve difficulty in remembering things.
Our brain works best with spaced repetition and not one time entry of info
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