I don’t know if I can do this

It was pretty common for me to slip into bouts of depressions when I was trying to become a programmer too :slight_smile:

It definitely has a major impact on your ability to retain new information for sure. Hopefully you get through this soon, and we’re all here to help!

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Thanks. You would think that having lived with depression as a large, sometimes borderline-corporeal presence for the best part of two decades I would be better at spotting the signs of when it has taken the wheel. But nope. It’s a tricky one.

I hope you’re doing well these days :slight_smile:

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I’ve been designing and programming for 10 years. As long as you know what to Google, you are good to go! Html, css, php, javascript… There’s no way to remember it all, the trick is knowing what type of data structure and logic to use, the rest is symantics.

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I started out learning through Udemy. Then moved to freecodecamp to learn more about JavaScript than Python. I now teach Python on Udemy and work as a Fullstack Engineer. I won’t say that every tutorial that I gone through on Udemy have been helpful or that every tutorial I watched wasn’t covering the same idea over and over again making me feel like I couldn’t do it or that I was constantly looking something up but I definitely learned the basics of xyz language. Freecodecamp helped realize that you aren’t going to memorize everything you need in order to build the app that you want to. All you need to memorize is the structure of the language the rest you can google. Like the reply above me said “As long as you know what to Google, you are good to go.”

The thing you will realize is that while you might not be remembering the exact syntax or keyword to use to create the responsive nav bar that you mentioned you are learning what to Google in order to create that nav bar. And I am sure that you are Googling and finding the answers needed to finish your project. And that is what I do on a day to day basis. I think you are doing great and if you are enjoying what you are doing then you will definitely be a developer in no time.

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@dannyjamesfletcher this made me laugh and gave me some relief lol. I am new(ish) to web development (I work as a program manager for an agency but have not actually built a website in a VERY long time). I keep getting hung up on whether it makes sense to use flexbox vs. grid and keep combining the two which doesn’t seem to work very well :sweat_smile:

I just started with with freecodecamp a month ago and I know it’s going to take some time, but hearing others that have been doing this for a while still get stuck is actually encouraging. Each time I find my way through a problem it’s really exciting when it actually works out. Thanks for sharing your experience!

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No problem! Glad it was encouraging :slight_smile:

One thing I will say, is that what helps me be productive is I learn the general concepts well. So although I don’t remember all the exact syntax of grid and flexbox I do understand (mostly) when and where to apply one or the other and I understand what both are capable of.

I find the concepts are much easier to retain for long periods of time once you really learn them but the specifics of the actual syntax are much harder for me. So I constantly have cheat sheets open.

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Practice makes the perfect! Always try to practice anything you learned. It’s the best way to remember and be a good developer.

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Thank you for honestly asking, and thank you to @jwilkins.oboe and @sitek94 for the the compassionate and thoughtful replies. I am grateful because @gordon_woodbine, you basically read my mind - I have said, felt and thought the same things as I am trying to gain traction in learning to become a programmer. So it helped me to hear you express them and to read the feedback :+1::pray:

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