Is it normal for beginners such as me to keep referring to materials?

[jameslow_96]

Hi, I just started to learn coding about a week ago and I came across freecodecamp from Youtube. It’s an excellent platform for beginners to learn with all the curriculums and materials provided but somehow when I’m doing the exercises such as building a tribute page or survey form, I keep referring to cheat sheets or the sample project… Is that a normal thing to do? I know the function of the tags and all but if you were to tell me to build a page without a reference, it would be near to impossible for me I think? Please do advice! Learning to code so that I can change my career

[JeremyLT]

I’ve been doing this for years. I constantly refer to reference materials. You can’t memorize it all, and it isn’t useful to do so. It is more important to know what tools are available and where to find the documentation on those tools.

[NyeverGator]

I started going through fCC last February and whenever I do, I would usually write what I learned (kept it short, did not wrote all of them) through a notebook. This is because I have this tendency to forget things, and if I did, I would refer to what I wrote and read to retain most of my knowledge.

I read whenever I wanted to (not everyday). I also did some research or googling on stuff that either I wanted to learn or as reference for something complex to me.

I don’t memorize, rather I took the time to understand what I have read and apply it whenever I am building something (a website or program).

Writing what I learned may have worked for me. You could try to do the same but I’m not sure if this would work for you and others as well. Either way, that depends on you.