I am so lost and I need help

Before I go on my rant I would just like to give some background on myself. I am currently a high school sophomore who has been learning about web development for the past 4 months I really hope to make this a profession by the time I graduate high school or maybe mid college. Lately it feels like I am not making any progress. I can’t do any of the projects online without seeking tutorials online that basically tell me the answer which kinda destroys the entire point of me doing these projects. I have no problem doing the algorithm challenges which really are not that challenging. But its the projects that I have trouble with especially the twitch project which I am currently on has absolutely nothing to do with what we leaning which is very stressful. I am just wondering if there are any resources out there to help me with my ordeals especially focusing on APis which I am having the most trouble with because I don’t really have any knowledge on how they work. Also any other forms of advice would be very helpful because I am feeling like I am heading towards my breaking point.

Yes, the projects deal with a lot of ideas that weren’t really covered in the lessons. Yes, most of us have felt exactly like you do right now. Yes, APIs can be a big pain in the ass. Yes, the Twitch project was especially a pain.

I would recommend googling a lot of these topics and start piecing it together. There are a lot of great youtube videos out there. I would create side problems to explore APIs. Just find some common APIs (for example) and just start messing with them.

And if you must, use the build tutorials. Maybe you watch them without coding and then see if you can recreate them. Or maybe you build them with the tutorial and then try to recreate them. The important thing is that you learn the concepts.

Relax. Keep at it. You’ll get there.

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Hello Ahenry80,

That is completely normal.
4 months as a developer, it’s like being a human baby with 1 year of life.
You must code and code, and understand what’s going on before you jump to something else.

Do not feel bad about seeking for help, just don’t copy and paste and jump to the next exercise.
Learn from others and understand what they did, and then try it yourself.
Consider improvements to what you did, or even changes.

At present i work as lead developer in a company dedicated to the broadcasting of digital content. I can assure you that there is no important project in which i have worked, that i have not consulted anything online. I’ve been helped by that person who answered some doubt in the SO forum, or by those guys who coded something and shared it with everyone in Github. Without them everything would have been more difficult.

When i met the project of FreeCodeCamp (and all that he means), and also read that we will collaborate with free projects, i thought it was my opportunity to help, and that’s why i registered.

In short, i am here because I HAVE BEEN HELPED SO MUCH, there is nothing wrong with it.
Now it’s you who need help, but later you will be the one who can help.

Just keep learning, eventually you will love coding.

Regards,
Bigbelman

Take it one step at a time. You know how you would do vocabularies in class? Do that when you encounter a phrase you don’t understand, using any resource you can. Try to understand what they really are instead of just glossing over.

To understand API, plug your API link into your URL bar. Your result should be a JSON. Since JSON is based on object literal, there’s no doubt you’ve seen it before.

It seems like you haven’t learned API JSON format yet because your mind hasn’t made the connection, but it’s basically the same as this FCC challenge.

General JS advice… You’re gonna have a MUCH easier time using JS and JS libraries when you understand function/object formats.

Let’s dissect

$(document).ready(function(){
});

You see a parenthesis. What does it mean? It means it takes in a parameter. What takes parameters? Functions.

So the $ is basically a function. Document is its parameter.

Next you see .ready. Remember that dot notation is for accessing properties. It’s followed by parentheses which means it’s a function. A function that’s also a property for an object is known as a method.

Inside the parentheses is an anonymous function, but this doesn’t have to be the case. Any anonymous function can replaced with a defined function.

For example, if you were to put

var defined = function(){

}

OR

function defined(){

}

You could do

$(document).ready(defined);

In summary, this tells the computer:

The function $ takes in the parameter document. A lot of things happen behind the scene, but the result of $(document) is an object that has the property ready. This property is a method that takes in defined as that property’s parameter.

This is a very simple example but once you understand how prevalent this concept is, it’ll be that much easier to understand what your code is really doing.