Retaining beginners information

Im a complete beginnner when it comes to this coding stuff so I decided to give this site a chance. I got up to around lesson 70 and have now found myself with one common problem. I often have to go back to previous lessons cause I cant remember certain things or what they do (also this is difficult to do considering lessons only have numbers so you have to spend time going through each one till you find what you need, rather than a grid layout i think a list format with the lesson number, a title, and a description of that lesson, would be really helpful).

Does anyone have any tips on this?

Hi @jojo5656 !

That is completely normal.
Remember that you have only been exposed to this material once so it is completely understandable that you will forget most things.

My advice for all beginners going through courses is to first aim for basic understanding of the material. Some concepts will be easier to understand than others but that is fine. Just aim for a basic understanding of the material.

Then you will start to build projects and will need to look up what certain things do.
At this point, this is where google comes in.

In the early days of coding, you will probably google these types of things.

“How do I center an image?”
“How do I get my link to open in a new tab?”
“How do I get my nav links to appear all in one row?”
etc…

Using google will lead to learn how to research when you encounter problems which is an important part of programming. Through this process, you will learn how to read documentation, articles, and ask questions when you need help.

Professional developers look things up all of the time because there is way to much stuff to remember.

The more your practice and build things, the more you will start to remember certain things but not everything.

Just keep learning and building things and you will start to build a good solid foundation in programming.

Hope that helps!

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The only things to memorize are names of concepts that can be googled. Think of it as remembering what key goes to what door, and nothing of the contents of what is behind said door.

For example the concept of a “css grid” is google-able and what you can search for later to get more in-depth information on how it works. However, knowing that name/concept and why you’d want to use it is something you’ll have to try to remember. Otherwise you either end up guessing based on the problem, or guessing if “css grid” will solve the problem you have.

So:

  • remember the concept/tools name so you can search it up
  • remember why you’d want to use the concept/tool so you can search it up when you actually need it.

Beyond that you don’t need to memorize anything as you can always look it up. You will naturally remember more concepts automatically the more you use them, and find better resources if you “search around” for a given topic.

Good luck, keep learning, keep building :+1:

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