I am 41 and lately I decided to learn coding in order to change my career in next few years. I have good working knowledge of computers and some practical experience with graphic design in Adobe Suite.
I just started with HTML course last week and I have couple of questions concerning learning routine.
My current job is based on 12 hour shifts in 3 consecutive days, making it difficult to squeeze in time for learning with other responsibilities and commute.
I am thinking of two days of full-time, 8 hour learning sessions (with breaks) on my two following days off and two-three hours on weekends - total of four days/20ish hours of study.
Would that be enough to make some reasonable progress, since I won’t be learning consistently every day of the week?
My other question is about progress. As I mentioned before, this is completely new territory for me and most of the concepts are still unfamiliar and I’m using outer resources such as W3 and Quackit to get better understanding of tags, attributes etc.
What would e the best way to learn? Finishing the assignment/lesson and then repeat it until everything becomes “natural” or I should go forward with the next lesson (CSS)?
I was thinking of replicating each lesson in Brackets (or some other editor). Would that be a waste of time and should I just follow the FCC program?
This shouldn’t be a problem. I’d actually be more careful about burnout from working and then spending another 2 8 hour days learning. Be sure to rest, relax and don’t continually grind too hard during this time.
Stay curious
Build stuff as soon as possible
Leveraging multiple resources as you are is great, there are many more, like mdn to help you learn and reference. Don’t try or expect to memorize everything, just try to keep things in mind relative to what you’ve already learned. When starting out the main goal is to learn the context to what your doing, along with a few specifics for what your focusing on.
I’d march on until you hit the projects. The projects are where you put everything together, debug issues you face and probably find out you forgot/don’t understand things. Thats totally ok. The projects are the closets things to actual work (which is why the newest parts are project based), where you are more “dropped” into a project you need to put things together yourself.
I think overall your plan is fine. Just beware of burnout. To help fight burnout be sure to stay curious and learn random stuff that seem interesting if you want. Don’t try to focus on too many things at once, and take breaks every now and then. Seek out inspiration as well, something as simple as reading about latest technologies, or coding stuff rather than social media can help fill time on your “work days” so your more inspired to get back into things on your days off.
