To focus on fundamentals or to keep going

Hello campers. First, this is my first post and I wanted to say that I’m IN LOVE with frecodecamp and its community. Can’t believe that it is so easy to start learning code so BIG THANK YOU for everything you do, and obviously I’m going to donate to the cause.

Now the topic. I’ve just finished the Responsive Web Design curriculum, and a cloud of doubts come to my mind. Should I keep practicing the basics (I still don’t feel totally comfortable with it) or should I keep going to the next lesson and keep practicing “on the way”.

This is important, as it depends on the subject. As a rule of thumb normally is better to work on the fundamentals, but in this case I’m not sure.

Thank you again, sorry for the big block :slight_smile:

Hello @juroga

When I was going through the curriculum, one thing that really worked for me was taking a couple of weeks break from the curriculum at the end of every certification. During this 2 weeks, I would revisit the just concluded certification and rebuild the projects as well as other related projects. This helped me understand the section better and gave me confidence before moving on to the next certification.

You can maybe revisit the areas you feel uncomfortable in, try rebuild the projects from scratch tweaking a few things, as a way of practicing what you’ve learned, then move on to the next certification afterwards.

Remember, the whole point should be learning and not just to complete the curriculum.

Happy learning.

1 Like

Hi Juroga, welcome to the freeCodeCamp forums!

The responsive web design curriculum focuses on part of the basic fundamental building blocks of the web, naming HTML and CSS. Your welcome to review this portion but I highly recommend continuing with the curriculum and marching into/down to JavaScript.

Without JavaScript, you’re looking at only parts of the picture that is the front-end. Once you learn more about JavaScript, you should be able to build more complex front-end projects, and most importantly start learning how to use a programming language. HTML and CSS are more like standards that you lookup and leverage when needed. JavaScript has some of that, but it also is a fully fleshed out programming language that you can use to tell the computer to “do stuff” and “think” all within the browser.

By learning JavaScript’s syntax, you can then start learning the fundamentals of programming, which can carry over into other languages, environments and situations. It’s at this point “learning the fundamentals” focuses primarily on the act of programming, or more generally “telling a computer how to solve a problem”.
Anything you learn about HTML and CSS will apply to only those technologies with a few tiny areas of knowledge that might carry over. JavaScript isn’t the same in that regard. Sure you might go out and learn another language like Python, and so you’ll need to learn new syntax, but the underlying principles underpinning programming itself will be exactly the same.

So yes, learn the fundamentals of programming and of what you’re doing, but do continue on as you’ll want a full picture of the main parts of the web, as you’ll need JavaScript.

Good luck, keep learning, keep growing!

1 Like

If you do practical projects you will still be writing HTML and CSS.

I would suggest mixing in some practical JS usage and not just doing algorithms. It is after all web development you are learning. You will get to the Front End Development Libraries part of the curriculum at some point, but I think it can be important to do some practical projects even before that.

JavaScript30

You all help me A LOT. Thank you very much, I will continue the curriculum but keeping practicing html and css.

There’s good advice here, but just to reiterate, don’t get bogged down, keep moving forward. A path like FCC, projects, something that keeps you learning new things. Don’t get caught in the briar patch of perfectionism. Keep moving forward.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 182 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.