I’ve gotten to the Weather App Project but feel like I’m missing knowledge if all I use are the lessons FCC have provided so far. As far as I can tell we’ve had 2 hours of relevant lessons in “JSON APIs and AJAX” (is this not back end?) in which we basically just copy and pasted answers and the terminology and syntax wasn’t explained. Am I meant to know how to do this project from this alone? This isn’t meant as a criticism of FCC as such but I’m not sure if it expects me to be able to pick up enough from these lessons alone or it expects me to do a lot of reading/research outside? Do I need to do just a little extra reading maybe using MDN resources or should I go and try to learn about APIs and AJAX properly from other sites? Any guidance would be appreciated.
FCC definitely expects you to do a lot of research outside the course, especially on the projects. Think of the course here as more a series of waypoints, with the actual navigation to these points left largely up to you.
It might seem harsh, but it’s preparing you for the reality of professional web dev. You’re going to get things thrown at you, and you won’t have a clue how to do them. But you will have an idea where to start looking, and how to Google relevant questions- these are the skills FCC really leaves you with.
Every project should push you to do more independent research and decision making. One of the most important skills that a developer has is the ability to search for and understand new resources.
You shouldn’t be copy and pasting answers at all (at the very least you should physically type them because it makes a difference in your retention) and you shouldn’t continue on if you didn’t understand what you just did. If you don’t understand part of a challenge, come here and discuss it with us. There are a couple challenges that will say something like “don’t worry about this part right now, we’ll explain it soon” but other than that there is no point in just copying code and not understanding it.
Oh, and no. AJAX and consuming APIs are not back end. “Back end” refers to server-side code.
I have a feeling this issue will be resolved when the Beta version goes live. You’ve been very diplomatic about it, but the reality is that the gap between what students are likely to know and what they need to complete the API/JSON challenges is a gaping chasm. I’m sure this is being addressed because it’s been raised a few times before.
This was definitely like hitting a brick wall for me. I did my own set of quotes for the random quote machine, but there was no way of getting around it for the weather app. I did a lot of research - reading posts here, googling, and took part of an Udemy course (I probably should get back & finish it… Kind of forgot about it until just now! .
I will say one thing though, FCC’s lessons on JSON & such are WAAAY better than the ones I took over at Code Academy. CA hardly explained what any of it meant at all, and was literally copy & paste (literally! that’s what the instructions tell you to do!!).
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