No. Zero. Days. My Roadmap from Javascript noob to Full Stack Developer in 12 Months

I see, thanks! I guess there is no “easy way” and reality will dictate what needs to be done. I started with very humble objective to become C Pro :wink: . But as got deeper into it I saw big gaps in knowledge everywhere else which had to be fixed.
Overall three subjects per day were feasible, more than that was hard. So I stuck with 3 for the most of the time and still doing it now.

thanks sir. to be honest i am feeling quite unproductive in 2018. every day is a struggle to be productive. I am hoping you can discipline yourself to do achieve your goals too.

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Hi @sw-yx, thank you for the blog post and the little Q&A here :slight_smile:

How did you overcome the algorithms challenges of freeCodeCamp? I completed 2/3 of the Intermediate JS challenges, today I was stuck on one of the challenges, after trying to figure it out myself I did a research on Google, which would help me pass the test too easily imo then there’s the ‘Get a Hint’ button that’s basically cheating. I would like to be able to solve the challenges by myself, if what was required was to click on ‘Get a Hint’ then anyone could code, I’m assuming that it’s not what will get me to be a good programmer.

One more question, regarding the same topic, when I get to solve a challenge by myself it’s basically just code that passes, it’s not hardcoded, and as DRY as I can do, but it’s far from top solutions that are neater, use features of JS I sometimes never heard of, shorter and apparently better performance-wise.

How did you go from ‘My code passed, yay!’ to ‘I’m confident my code is really good and significant improvements aren’t possible in the current version of JS’?

Nice story, although I can’t quit my job or attend a Bootcamp, I believe the main driver of your success was the fact that you spent a considerable about of time studying while still working, which I can do :slight_smile:

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hey Jon! Really really great questions. honestly the fact that you CARE about this means way more than actually being great. its a leading indicator. keep it up.

Honestly its been so many months that i dont remember the algo challenges at all but here is the rough strategy i recommend: give yourself up to an hour to solve an algo challenge. if you take more than an hour, you are no longer being productive. peek and get the hint or the answer, whatever, then try and solve the thing. even with hints sometimes the answer is harder than it looks. its fine to take hints. the key is to COME BACK TO THE CHALLENGE 1 WEEK LATER and do it again. repeat until you can get it first try.

bottom line is dont feel like you should be able to divine all the answers on your first try. this is a new kind of problem solving and your brain is still rewiring to be able to do this. its not you being dumb, its just a new kind of problem. once you’ve done enough of them you’ll be able to see enough patterns to solve the -rest- the first try. its kind of like expecting to be able to swim without having swum at all or having seen other people swim. your body can do it, you just need a few practice runs.

top solutions are helpful to grow your knowledge but dont take it as the BEST solution. let me explain. in real life js work there is a saying - code is read 10x more than it is written. if your code is super sexy and concise but nobody can read it without googling stuff then you’re no good as a teammate. in the words of another friend: “not every line of code should be an exercise in code golf”. so take some tricks from those solutions (especially if they have much better performance - that is relevant in an interview) but dont take it as a bible.

so yea. keep doing what ur doing, just do it every day for a year. i do not believe you can do js for a year and not end up being confident that your JS is solid. good luck.

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Thank you for your reply,

It reminds of space repetition learning, it would be great to have such a system integrated to fCC - I get your point, it makes sense.

Started the #100daysofcode on the 1st of January partly thanks to your blog post, it’s motivating me!

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Sorry for being a bit dense here, but could you explain a bit further the exact process you used here please? When you update your blog, does it continue your streak on github? Thanks for the great information. I have checked out your blog by the way and discovered that your very post shows how you created your blog and presumably linked it to your github account.

Thanks again.

minor update - i am now teaching a fellow camper how to link frontend and backend JS here: https://forum.freecodecamp.org/t/sunburstjs-fullstack-js-livestream-at-4pm-on-jan-16/169066/1

theres not much to explain. when you push anything to github, including a blog post, it continues the streak. :slight_smile: its a gimmick but you need all the help you can get to trick your brain into doing things that are good for you.

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