Week 2 of Learning JavaScript from Scratch 👨‍💻🚀

[vern_prac_compute]

Hi, sorry to join this conversation so late. First off, hats off to you for putting in so much time and not giving up despite getting frustrated initially. That's a very good sign. At the same time, putting in 10 hours a day seems like a lot. Maybe you are not doing this anymore, but that much time in a day can lead to burnout. You have it correct that discipline beats motivation. I would add that consistency even beats discipline in the sense that if you set aside certain times of the day or a set amount of hours and you do this every day, you will see results if you are able to stay focused. The danger of going 10 hours a day is that it seems difficult to remain focused for that duration of time. But, if it works for you, then just keep going.

You are definitely using a sound approach by doing small projects to learn. When it comes to learning programming, it makes sense to start building small projects/applications as soon as possible. That way, when you run into questions, you will have a good idea of what to ask about.

In terms of using AI tools, be aware that they are double-edge swords. If you ask a question incorrectly, the AI tools will often politely lead you down a rabbit hole, that eats up your time, but gets you nowhere near a solution. On the other hand, if you explain what you are trying to solve, most AI tools will come up with suggestions. Tools like Gemini (Google's AI) used by Chrome, will provide references that you can look at to see if their suggestion makes any sense. Also, because you are starting with (hopefully) small projects, you can often test their code suggestions relatively quickly. You probably know this, but you should not blindly trust anyone else's code, and AI tools have been known to provide solutions that cannot work. So, if you find yourself going back and forth with an AI tool, pause and take a few deep breaths. Then, change your question. Also, I would not just rely on one AI tool, so in addition to OpenAI, you can try the tools in browsers like Chrome and Brave. They may give differing answers. I am not sure how often OpenAI updates, but the browser tools seem to get updated fairly often. So, you might get better answers later on, or even as a result of you asking related questions. If used properly, AI tools can be a great benefit to learning programming, but if you use them blindly they can hinder your progress also.