I just picked up learning web development about two months ago. It’s been a hell of a ride learning the various foundation languages and how they are linked together to form a cohesive whole. I first started my journey when I was sitting a coffee shop pondering about my current career and ways I could develop it. My brother had recently picked up web development and I thought it may appeal to me as well.
I immediately started researching online for courses. After about a week or so I was fully immersed. I hadn’t challenged myself to this extent before and I was loving it. It filled my long evenings after work with an awesome learning outlet.
After the first month I started to slow down. Things started getting tougher when I was introduced to JavaScript and DOM manipulation. I noticed myself researching online for various ways of writing script for specific applications. My frustrations amplified when certain methods or functions just didn’t make sense to me. I was in a rut and I contemplated giving up the hobby all together. I wasn’t learning at the speed I was expecting and I think there were many reasons for that.
I soon realized that my expectations were out of proportion. This has been a common attitude that has surfaced soon after finishing high school. It stems from comparing myself to others. It had only become relevant once I graduated because I’d never been a good student before my senior year. In college I experienced the same feeling, thinking I needed to know more than I did because I saw so many others succeeding. I knew this attitude needed to change if was to learn a new language in fact several new languages, frameworks and libraries. Not to mention, all the other necessary skills like marketing, business, and design, if I was to achieve my goals. I think many people are stuck in this mindset: “If I can’t do it easily, it’s not worth doing.” I think I found the culprit for why this attitude is so common.
I bet a lot of people know why I bring this up or they don’t know. YouTube is a great place to find inspiration, in fact a lot of it, and that’s precisely the problem. The influence YouTube personalities can have on people like myself and most people in general, is astonishing (This is obvious because of the shear traffic this website gets). In the case of web development, there are so many diverging opportunities and opinions towards developing your skills and interests. I saw myself bringing up YouTube just to get a fresh bit of insight towards what I was getting myself into, only to realize I was getting stuck. Showing no signs of advancement in my skills, I stopped watching and unsubscribed from all YouTube channels that had something to do with my new career. This had a substantial effect on my learning speed but most importantly it helped me find alternative outlets to hone my skills, which I will talk more about later.
Let’s start from the beginning. I’m not going to say the course I took online was useless but it’s definitely not the only thing that will turn someone into a good web developer. The sheer amount of content that was skipped or just skimmed over was astonishing. I actually stopped half-way through because it was getting to the point were the professor was literally telling me what I needed to write without fully explaining how it worked (Not that other Boot-camps are this way but from what others have said it’s a common pattern).
If I wanted to revisit a concept or specific method I would have to rewind the video just to get the content I was looking for. Obviously, this was super inefficient.
When my frustrations reached peak levels, I started researching online for solutions to the problems I was facing only to realize that I did not have the vocabulary to properly reference what I was looking for. I spent at least a week or two in this loop of research without seeing much progress. I needed to change my approach.
Well it’s clear that the library of tutorials, blogs and forums online are an excellent resource for developers but there not the greatest for new developers, in my opinion.
Research can help developers troubleshoot specific problems to their current projects but if their foundation knowledge hasn’t been fully developed, researching these specific problems can be a headache. I ran into this issue because their was certain terminology I didn’t know or I just didn’t have the words to describe the problems I had.
Copy pasting was also a habit I got into even though I really didn’t know what I was copying. I soon learned that this was super inefficient because I was having difficulty making it work with the rest of my code, not to mention this could eventually become a security issue, especially with scripts.
Lastly, if didn’t have specific knowledge for research I would often run into the YouTube rabbit whole. I soon found out that I was doing it wrong the whole time because I was not using my strengths. In my case, that is reading text-books.
After my struggles with the web and the Boot-camp I realized I needed to change how I approached my learning process. This meant pacing myself and using three new resources that supported my learning style.
Books weren’t the first thing that resonated with me but so far they have been the most helpful. What’s great about books for beginners like myself, is that they fully explain all the foundation knowledge needed to take on more complex problems. I’m now almost finished my first text book which is called JavaScript & J-Query, and I can say I’ve re-learned a lot of content but I was also able to find missing links in my knowledge. The biggest and most useful discovery thus far has been the “Event Object” which is still giving me trouble, but cool nevertheless.
Medium has been an useful application filled with great articles on web development, plus I get to write my own little bits!
There are also plenty of others great websites for articles but Medium has been a great resource. I try to avoid looking at my reading feed because it can do the same thing YouTube does. I usually use it with intention; only researching what I need and nothing else.
Podcasts have also been an awesome resource. I use them sparingly because they are very time consuming but one that I’ve liked a lot has been the Developers Tea. A link to it here: https://spec.fm/podcasts/developer-tea
It has a very generalized approach and has provided some useful insights. The host, Jonathan Cutrell has emphasized that the podcast should be used with intention, picking only the podcasts that appeal to your current needs.
All together, I’m understanding that learning to become a web developer is hard and requires a lot of dedication. I’ve made it a priority to minimize distractions while learning what it takes to become a junior developer. This has meant stopping the use of distracting content on the internet and focusing on developing foundation knowledge. With time I’ll be able to start making awesome websites for people and maybe one day become a full stack developer.
Thanks for read and I hope it was useful and or relatable!
Happy coding!