About to finish Basic Javascript, 7 more lessons after Profile Lookup challenge. I feel like I still haven’t fully grasped things like loops, looking for items within arrays etc… What can I do to fill in these gaps without having to repeat the lessons over? I might just do that but if there are any other ways you guys figured these gaps out? Done today after 2 lessons, I encountered the Profile Lookup challenge and the bong rip I took before disagreed lol. Never smoke before you learn to code, big lesson
First of all, Java and JavaScript are two different things - don’t let the name fool you. It’s like “egg” and “eggplant”.
It is completely normal to feel “unprepared”. Relax. FCC is not comprehensive. It is a brief overview of major topics. If you can’t grasp something, do some research. Look at some youtube videos. Read the MDN docs. Ask the forum. As a real life dev, you will never have “all the answers” so this is an important skill.
I came to FCC with a little programming knowledge and a few coding classes from 2 decades before and I struggled with some of those things. But I did research and figured them out. Now I’m a professional dev. Just keep at it - this is hard stuff. If it were easy, it would be a minimum wage job. It’s a good thing that it’s hard to learn. But if you keep at it, you’ll get it.
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Well that gave me some peace of mind. I was under the assumption that everyone else was breezing past the challenges except me. Whenever I see what the people of the forum have to say about solutions it makes me realize I have been missing a huge chunk of what is asked of me (and I usually cannnot recall that chunk). This happens with those “testey,” type of challenges.
But the fact that I made it this far from knowing absolutely nothing about coding does motivate me alot. I did the whole HTML/CSS certificate and that wasn’t difficult and I made strides. But when I hit Javascript, I am making tiny incremental progress, but it is still pushing me away from 0. Patience is also key with this stuff.
FCC has helped me in ways I never though could happen for a long time, and I greatly appreciate its existence because its free and could help thousands of underprivileged people trying to make it. This place serves as an escape for me, keeps me busy and out of trouble. I will definitely keep trying, whether a challenge takes me 4 days or 10 on top of general life lol. Thanks for your words.
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Thank you
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I am a beginner myself and use codewars.com to further practice my skills. The challenges get progressively harder but you start with fundamentals. Just a slight warning, because even tho they call it fundamentals it is more like advanced fundamentals. I was it first surprised but it is doable.
I looked it up and I think it is allowed to recommend websites. I am also just a user of the website and do not gain anything for the recommendation.
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Yeah, you’re definitely not alone. And just because you struggle with one thing does not mean that you are not cut out to be a coder. There are still some JS concepts with witch I struggle.
Xipo mentioned things like codewars. Those can be a cool resource. I would just add the caveat that some of those challenges can be poorly written. And some of the people that write them are trying to trick you and have sneaky edge cases. That being said, that can be good training for job interviews, because they often do the same thing - hopefully not trying to screw you but trying to see if you ask the right questions and think it through or are at least aware of what is not clear. Hackerrank is another site like that.
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