I started at WOZ-U in November of last year and am about to graduate from the JavaScript Full Stack Development Course. And I will be 100% honest because I need help BAD!!! I started here for a career change and have had no prior experience until now. 100% beginner right here!
I have learned and been able to grasp the concepts of HTML, CSS, and a little JavaScript through 8 months of nothing but working through the material and attempting to build sections of what would be for an app or website but never how to connect the dots or where to even start.
File structure?..What??? No material on how to build or maintain your code. I can’t even begin to go on about all the other things that aren’t explained.
Do developers, programmers, teachers, etc…even think about how hard it might be for someone who knows nothing about coding? It literally takes you to change the way you think about problem solving and changes a lot of other ways you think.
But I am not there yet and feel like I am behind the curve. It is frustrating to see others in the same class know exactly what is going on. I need help…advice…resources…something to help me turn this “Light Bulb” on. I’m at a loss and do not know what to do…
You need to build projects. Lots and Lots of them. In other words, Practice. Lots and lots of practice writing YOUR OWN code.
It’s through building projects and learning what works and what doesn’t, what saves time and what doesn’t, do you get the practical experience of when/how to use something.
Watching more videos and taking more courses isn’t the way. You end up with a lot of “book knowledge” but no practical skills on how to apply what you know to complete a project.
The good news is that there’s nothing wrong with you.
The bad news is that I know this because there is always something coming around the corner that feels completely alien - new ways that you have to approach problems or new problems that you don’t have go-to methods for solving. I’m one of those real-world, grown-up developers and at work I spent the better part of two days working on what ultimately boiled down to about 10 lines of code. I went around in circles. I googled. I asked for help. I tried things almost at random. I put my head down on my desk and took calming breaths. When I submit my solution for code review, someone may say “Why are you doing it that way? That’s dumb.” (but nicer because people are actually pretty nice about calling you a moron).
You ask if we “even think about how hard it might be”. The answer is that we do, but we also accept it as the status quo. What changes over time is what things are that overwhelm you and your attitude toward feeling overwhelmed. When the lightbulb goes off, you don’t stay in the well-lit room. You’re looking for the door to the next dark room.
Thank you for that. I do understand that it will always be a learning process no matter when or where we might be with technology. But I guess what I’m really saying is how to I convert to that way of thinking to logically break down problems so easily like most programmers/developers do? Sometimes I see exercises and read the criteria over and over again trying to grasp where or what to even start on to solve the problem…then why I ask for help and see the solution…half the time it doesn’t make any sense to me at all.