My question is: Should I take notes of what the projects teach?
I don’t recommend freecodecamp if you’re totally new to coding. It’s better that you have a proper idea of what you are doing when you are doing the projects on freeCodeCamp because it can be really confusing if you’re new.
You can try other websites like w3schools or programiz or watch videos if you’re trying to learn for the first time, then do the freeCodeCamp projects when you’ve got a some amount of understanding of code.
Hey @dacciardi
I’m happy to see you have started your coding journey
About your question let me put it this way
Almost all of the developers are against taking notes while learning from tutorials, documents, or any other resources but most people make this mistake at the beginning of their journey and that’s normal because the main reason is the educational system! because all beginners think they are going to memorize the codes but learning programming is not working in this way
Programming is far more than memorizing because it’s impossible to take a note for everything plus taking notes while learning is a kind of counter-productivity and time-consuming action instead, programmers learn while building projects and making mistakes then go to find the answers to their problems this is how they learn generally (of course it’s just an overall viewpoint, in the details there are lots of different paths and solutions)
It may help you to write down the project name at the top of a paper and keep track of new concepts learned as you go by step. Noting down the project name and step number will help you find the specific concept again if you find yourself struggling with it in a later step.
(Not every step teaches something worth noting down, but if you learn a new word, you can note it down until you have memorized what it means)
In truth, there’s no one answer.
Taking notes is a double edged sword, often the things you note down early on can be incorrect, causing trouble for you later when you try to use those notes.
However, the act of writing things down can help.
I still take notes, but use them differently now.
- I try to pull information from other resources first, to be sure I understand a little more about something before adding to my notes.
- I often re-read the last page of my notes, to recap my last learning session.
- I throw away ALL my notes every 6 months or so, to encourage me to use online resources, such as documentation and references. (this is a way of levelling up)
I still find creating my own cheat sheets helpful.
You can get cheat sheets online and I advise you use them. But making your own personalised to what you use/forget most can make things easier when you have different languages with slightly differently named functions.
All in all, If you do use note taking as part of your learning journey, as you gain more experience you will lean when you need to/don’t need to take notes
I think taking notes can be helpful if you find it helpful, but don’t worry about memorization but rather understanding what’s going on