Quick question. I have run through all of the course work leading up to the first two challenges (Tribute,Portfolio), and I know for a fact, that I could not sit down and even begin to create something with a blank page and no guidance. How many times have ya’ll run through the course material in the past before doing the challenges or moving on to another section. At this point I feel like I would need to do every section a dozen times.
Should I just keep trucking along until I hit a wall and then go back and start over? Should I repeat each section a few times before moving to the next? What study/practice method have ya’ll found that works best with FCC? Thanks! Cheers !
Side Note: Looking ahead, gets me super overwhelmed.
Feeling overwhelmed is normal. It is A LOT of material spanning many categories and FCC does not try to give you a comprehensive, hand-holding learning experience. If you have something that confuses you, by all means to some side research. Check google, ask the forum, etc.
I wouldn’t “truck ahead” if you’re truly lost. Although I also don’t think you should hold yourself back if you’re a little confused. I think there is too much information to understand everything completely before moving on. Just get a basic idea. I also keep a list of things I want to learn better and when I have time I start researching.
Don’t worry about it too much, just keep making progress.
If you search around on this forum, you’ll see a lot of people feeling overwhelmed when they get to the first challenges. You will need to be researching tools and techniques outside of FCC in order to pull them off successfully. I advise against running through the lessons again. You may want to revisit some specific ones as needed, to refresh a particular skill.
First things first: kill the blank page. Just put some basic HTML elements in there. You can add style and fancy behavior is stages.
I was able to do the tribute and Portfolio pages pretty quickly because I already had experience using Twitter Bootstrap. I would suggest doing this tutorial:
I have to take tons of notes whenever learning something new, and I almost never review them. The act of writing forces me to slow down, ask questions, and let the material churn in my mind. If I can’t explain what I’ve just learned, then I don’t know it and have to go back for review.
This is the best advice. It’s so easy to freeze when you’re thinking of what to make, but the first step should be to just get anything started, even if it’s the ugliest piece of crap you’ve ever seen. It’s so much easier to change something you hate than conjure something you love, even if you scrap it and start over.
Thank you for the feedback. It is definitely a lot of material. I will take your advice and keep moving forward, with outside research on the topics I’m unsure of. Thanks. Cheers
It took me around a week to be satisfied to an extent with my Portfolio, and studying on I felt overwhelmed at times, especially with the javascript challenges. My recommendation is to always use a reference, and to code in your own editor, and learn how to test it. Take your time, languages don’t sink not in a day, month and year its a long and fun journey!
This confusion you’re feeling is super normal ! You just need to relax, and start by the beginning, and keep getting through all courses until you get stuck.
Then, when first obstacles appear, don’t panic ! Keep a google tab opened and google any code or instructions you don’t understand. I mean when you get stuck, you could desperate, or consider you reach a new level in your cursus with fresh and exciting new things to learn. When it gets really hard and you start losing confidence, go on this forum, or on any dev friendly forum and ask for help.
Only in FCC, I can ensure you tens of people will come to help you.
Point by point, lesson by lesson, you’ll get better. Don’t go in a short term evaluation, because you will learn plenty, but at each level, you will feel that a lot remains to learn. This is normal too.
And so, one day, you’ll notice that you have only brand new things to learn, because you will have a good programming stack and will just have to stay up to date.
Even for a senior like me (I coded 15 years in software dev world), I had to put myself seriously when I switched from soft to web world. Even the toughest devs must pass by a learning curve, because front end is far more complicated and complete than before. It’s now a real science.
You need not be overwhelmed, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a step. I can’t really start to tell you how “easy” it’s been for me, but now, i am on my last FEWD project.
Sometimes, i think programming is just fun, especially when you try to play around with stuffs, different approaches different results.
Overall, it feels wonderful being able to tell the system what to do and how to do it, and then it obeys… Lol…
What a great, useful and positive advice. I’ve written down within my notes so I have them handy when I need some inspiration and encouragement. Thank you!
I don’t know if this will help, but I remember when I started, I was doing codecademy back then, and it was very similar to freeCodeCamp’s approach. I was having trouble internalizing everything with this approach, so I looked for other sources, the usual tutorials, videos on youtube, I even took a class on a school in the city. All of that helped, but I found the videos where actually more helpful for me, I even took some lessons from codeschool.com (even though is not free) those videos helped me out a lot. I even remember having an “aha” moment that it all kind of made sense, to the point I was able to create apps of my own. However, after more than 4 years now, it is hard to catch up to the fast paced world of Web Development.
!
its a long and fun journey!