I completed those challenges too some how but I have already forgotten some of the lessons or I am still confuse about them. So I am on Basic Javascript but still repeat the lessons I have completed in HTML/ CSS, specially grid, flex as they are easily misunderstood but very useful. 12 Months down and still on basics… LOL 
but I still hope for better very late if not as sooner as others. No rush.
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Cheat sheets? I almost always either have some kind of word/pages document set up for pasting code snippets, hints, “words of wisdom” etc… or on scraps of paper.
I used to lug my old course books and two binders (I think one was a JCL manual and the other DB2? Haven’t seen them in ages- buried in boxes) to every job I had as a QA Tester. The JCL and COBOL info from my course work helped a ton in the early days. (now I’m leaning into Web Dev 
).
So- it’s fine to have reference materials right there whether in digital form or hard copy. Bears repeating - you won’t be able to remember EVERYTHING… 
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Great story, @snowmonkey! I too, am a classical guitarist with formal music training. And, yes… what you say is so true. I also noticed so many parallels between coding and learning a piece of music - it’s uncanny just how similar the processes are.
Stick with it, @Stketcher. Just like learning a difficult piece of music, don’t let the idea of the finished project intimidate you - just be patient with yourself, break down the big problem into smaller, manageable ones, and build upon what you know so far.
And, by all means, take periodic breaks and do something completely different! It’s amazing how stepping away from the code (or, music!) for a short time to do something else can reveal insights into solutions that we were unable to see when the problems are front-and-center. I still have times where I get stuck and feel as if I’m beating my head against the wall. That’s probably a good time to pick up the guitar for a while, eh @snowmonkey ?
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I can totally understand and you are not the only one.
I will highly recommend to always take notes in a notebook when ever you are doing an exercise and write points what you learned, what was easy or difficult to understand. It helped me personally to make list of things which was easy to understand and which were confusing. Things which were confusing i kept going back to it , gooogled, googled, googled, until i understand the core concept.
if some one had paid me a dollar for every time i heave search on google, i had been a millionaire.
Not trying to remember it but to understand.
> Just like any other human language, we dont try to remember what does “dog” means, we understand what “dog” is. Because if you will try to remember it, you might get confused “dog” with a “wolf”, but do we? i dont think so.
But just so you know, not discouraging, but this is how its going to be for the rest of your life if you are chosing this path. Things are constantly changing, computer languages comes and goes, their syntax changes, new frameworks comes and goes. You will always find yourself struggling but thats the fun in it.
Its like an adventure.
and i wish you a great one.
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I think you are doing just fine…you hit the nail on head with this sentence…“You will have to google a lot, go back, re-think stuff, fail and do it again.”…We are not all like Nikola Tesla…but with that being said…Tesla could never remember to pay rent or own a house and always had rich investors doing things for him that he was not capable of doing…You should put that sentence on a shirt!!
You will have to google a lot, go back, re-think stuff, fail and do it again. GOOD STUFF!!!
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I’m in the same situation but with 2 months. In my opinion FCC is great to think and complete challenges and also to get certifications and some real hours of practice and learning.
After I completed HTML and CSS at FCC I start to search some Youtube video tutorials because I felt that with videos will be a little more easy to learn.
Later I bought some courses at Udemy that in my opinion some of them are very accesible video learning content with experienced persons in programming and teaching. Is helping me a lot with HTML, CSS and JS.
Maybe video tutorials could help you (is helping me a lot).
Good luck!
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Some great advice in here - some of which I’d not thought of myself.
I’m having my first real go at becoming a web dev, having played around with code for years, but always getting to a point where I just decided it was too difficult for me and moved on to something else altogether.
I’m now 3 challenges complete in to the HTML / CSS section (having completed all the mini challenges) and there have been times - especially with non-cooperative CSS (which in the end was obviously my own fault) - that I wanted to ditch it, and my thoughts echoed that of the OP.
I was especially frustrated that I wasn’t remembering things, but it’s important to recognise that even though it seems like relatively simple stuff, you’ve been encountering THOUSANDS of new terms and syntaxes in just a couple of weeks. You don’t start talking a new language immediately. You remember a couple of things to begiun with - ‘Hello’, ‘thank you’, ‘please can I have’ etc and then you build on that knowledge base - and the same applies for coding.
With the design projects, I probably re-coded each one from scratch 5-6 times before I was happy with them - mainly because they didn’t match the design aesthetic I wanted. But what I hadn’t consciously realised, was that the repetition was improving my skills at a base level, and now I feel I can create a responsive shell for a basic webpage now, without looking for much - if any - help and that’s a cool feeling.
To anyone at the early stages of learning - stick with it and you’ll work it out eventually!
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Thanks to everyone who has posted encouraging messages!
Hopefully other beginners will see this and take something from it. FCC truly shines because of its community.
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That cheatsheet link is a goldmine thank you
I totally understand where you’re coming from especially when I first started but just like with learning any new languages it’ll take time and repetition.
“If you’re going through hell keep going.”
-Winston Churchill
I am also complete beginner and currently going through html/css lessons. Thanks for sharing this .
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Dude took the words right out my mouth, but some of these reponses are on point.
I too am a musician. Great analogy! You have to do it over and over and it eventually syncs in.
Pretty new here myself, I started on January 1st. Pretty much same story, got through all the challenges doing about two hours a day, sometimes more, and I was worried about the same thing; however, I’ve found that working on those projects is where the real learning happens! I’ve had to go back and look at most of the challenges again as I’m trying to implement it on my own pages and definitely have had to do A LOT of googling, and now it feels like some of the concepts are starting to stick.
I was watching this youtube video where this dev was talking about things that tend to stop beginners, and I was relieved to hear him talk about this. He said how people will start to feel discouraged because there’s so much information out there and there’s no way that you can know everything, but it’s really no reason to be discouraged at all that’s one of the greatest things about coding and languages; they’re always changing!
So yeah, you might never know EVERYTHING about a particular language, but you don’t need to and chances are that most everyone else that’s doing this on a pro level doesn’t either. Everyone hits blocks and it’s the skill of unblocking yourself that makes a great coder!
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Hello Stketcher,
I’ve just finished my first project just a few days back. I have this fear that I’ll forget everything what i learned but, I’m pushing myself because “You’re defeated once you stop fighting” - the twelve year night.
Whenever, I learn something, I try to make a video clip about it, even write it in a document word. For my tribute page, I’ve gone through my previous FCC materials again and also doing the same thing for survey form as well. And now, whatever I’m learning from my previous material, now i feel the confidence that I’ll remember it forever.
So, it took me two/ three times of going through the same material, in order to believe that I’ll remember.
I hope we all make it 
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Well you can search on W3school … there you can get a lot to know about programming and coding. Just type W3school on google.
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How are you doing now? How far are you do you mind to sharing it with us.
Hello how are you doing now? How far are you? Do you mind sharing it with us.
This is where I am today.
I have completed HTML/CSS portion of the curriculum and tried to start the tribute project and realized I have no idea what I was meant to do 
…Google time 
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is it getting better now ??