Have loved the overall experience with freecodecamp until I got to Javascript. I feel like it is not challenging in the right way. I absolutely fly through all the challenges with ease, but still barely know how to write a function or create an object. I feel like this is because there is too much “hand holding”. I want to go through the tedium of writing out the structure because I know it will help me remember. So far the impact of the javascript curriculum has been ephemeral and I usually forget the lesson when I close the browser.
Do other people experience this? How have you worked around it?
Yeah, others experience this. I think FCC is focused on creating small, bite-size chunks of learning. Different people learn at different speeds and while there may be sections through which you sail, others may struggle and need that “hand holding”.
It may seem repetitious, but that can be a good thing - it tends to pound it into the memory. You may not be able to produce that knowledge at this point, but it does help in the long run. There is soooooo much stuff to learn.
And yes, it is a big jump from doing the FCC little problems and building an actual app. I would recommend youtube videos of people building basic apps. FCC even makes some of them.
Yeah, that’s a good point. FCC doesn’t have to be the only thing you’re doing. But it is a good framing device for your learning, giving you a fruitful path. But if you get bored, maybe spend some times looking for other small tutorials to get some other ideas and other perspectives.
You’ll notice the more you do this, the more you go from bouncing to working on a project, to googling, to reading StackOverflow, to reading an article, to watching a Youtube video, a Udemy tutorial, a coding forum, etc. All of it will help you.
Thank you guys for the suggestions. I agree that I need to diversify my learning resources. I think completing a few projects will really hammer these lessons home.
I take detailed notes while doing the projects. Providing us with the function templates probably does us more harm than good since the repetition would improve our memory, but reading and analyzing the provided code could help.
It sounds like FCC recognizes the shortcomings you’ve mentioned, and have plans to improve the curriculum. Although, that doesn’t help us now.
I get the impression that FCC isn’t design to make you competent, rather it gives you just enough information that you know what the subject is so you can further explore it elsewhere.
You can probably go through HTML and CSS fairly quickly, because they are very straight forward.
JavaScript on the other hand require practice & study along side with HTML/CSS to be effective.
To be really good with JavaScript it will take a lot of experimentation and reading.
Definitely, FCC is not designed to be comprehensive. It will give you pretty good starter knowledge along a fairly common stack. You are expected to take side trips when you need (or want) to. And in order to get “competent”, you’re going to have to build a lot of projects on your own. And as said, being able to look things up, find answers (or half answers), and figure them out is one of the most important skills you use as a developer. It’s a rare day on the job that I don’t look up at least a dozen things on google, Stack Overflow, MDN, or general online docs. There have probably been days where that number gets closer to 50.
