JavaScript frustration, lack of progress

Hello, I am currently on the JavaScript section on FCC, and I am feeling frustrated. I am almost done with the first section, but I feel like I haven’t progressed at all. I had troubles with the golf game, card counting challenge, most of the challenges in fact.

The other sections were pretty fine, but when I have to apply something, it is as if I didn’t learn anything before. I also started watchandcode, the JavaScript section on codeacademy, I started reading other sources. I also tried solving various exercises for beginners, which are labled as easy online, but nothing.

Did you also encounter this problem? Did things got easy after a while, did things start to click?

My first challenge app 3 years ago was to build a weather forecast app. Pretty straight forward no more than 10 lines of code, just an ajax API call from openweather.api and then display the data on screen. Well im ashamed to admit that this whole process took me 1 full week of research and trial and error to figure out. Then the next project came and it was all over again. After a while i realized how i could do projects that i knew in less than 2-4hours, just by typing code coz i was pretty confident and it felt good, felt like i was at last getting used. I wasnt, i was lying myself, we learn when we are outside of our comfort zone, it looks like we are stuck but we are actually tryin to figure out how to solve the problem, thats what coding is. It doesnt matter the language used or the project you are building, you are solving problems, and those problems are often frustrating its part of the package im afraid. As someone on stackoverflow said we spend most of the time researching and maybe only 10% of the time actually typing the code. Cant be helped im afraid.

1 Like

Hi Aka1822,

It’s not just you. Learning how to code is tough and there is more out there than any one person can ever learn. There are always going to be new challenges and things to learn. It’s going to be a lifelong learning process.

Transitioning from following a tutorial or exercise to solving a problem is a big jump. It might be the toughest part of learning how to code. It’s easy to get discouraged, but keep it up! You can do this!

It does get easier and things will start to click for you. Just keep on putting the time in and coding. As you go along, try to challenge yourself to take what info is in a tutorial, or a doc, or an exercise you’re doing and apply it to a different problem than the one being addressed in the source material. For example, you might be following an online tutorial on how to build a clock with JS. How can you take that info and make a clock that runs backwards? Or what about a timer that counts down from some specific time? What about triggering an event at a certain time like maybe the clock changes into a pumpkin at midnight? How about having multiple clocks on the screen at once? Just let your mind find some way to take the idea that the material is working with and turn it to see a new side of it. The more you do this, the more you’ll build up your knowledge and confidence. This is what’s worked best for me.

Best of luck to you! Keep coding!

IMHO it’s great to feel frustrated, sometimes.
Why? Because you’ll have to stretch yourself.
Stretching (= Deliberate Practice) leads to a lot of improvement.

Also frustration will weed out the field,
because a lot of people will give up.

Frustration will never leave the game.
You will leave the game or you will have to learn to cope with frustration.

I tutor folks in math, and sometimes people tell me, “I do okay on the homework! I work through it… then the exam happens and boom! it all leaves my mind!”
We talk a bit and… doing the “homework” is like singing along to the radio. The exam is a solo performance. Some strategies people use are: once you get a thing right, hide the work and start the same chunk of code over and think through what you’re doing and why and how this might apply… if yo have to peek back at the first attempt, you don’t know it yet.
Going the other direction… once you understand something, try to figure out what the next tougher application will be (okay, I am just beginning to get there for a few things myself.)
This might not apply to you at all – advice worth every penny you paid for it…
… and now I need to go do that myself… GOOD LUCK :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Thank you all for the replies :slight_smile:

Trust me, you’re not alone on this issue. Learning JavaScript is a totally different field, especially coming from only html/css.

I remember when I first started learning JavaScript, going through countless videos and tutorials to even understand what a function is. During that time I actually quit coding for 6 months, during those off months, my motivation sparked back up and this time I was not going to give up.

Coming back to coding, I re visited those tutorials and courses that I’ve done in the past, except this time, I was not going to advance to the next video/lecture until I confidently knew what the code I was writing was doing. Deleting and rewriting the code again, while trying not to use any references, sooner or later JavaScript started to become less foreign and easier to understand. It’s not going to happen overnight, but if you stay dedicated to yourself, all the hard work will pay off.

For me, it personally took probably a month, a month of coding everyday for 8+ hours, to get used to the language to the point where I can tackle some of the algorithm challenges here.