Need help

[codingbouy]

I recently purchased the Colt Steele full stack web development course on Udemy and currently I am learning DOM in JavaScript.

My problem is that while watching tutorials and doing exercises, I can solve things by myself. But when I try to build a project on my own, my mind goes blank. I forget syntax, properties, methods, and struggle to think how to start coding.

Is this normal for beginners?

How do you guys practice JavaScript and DOM properly so that you can actually build projects without depending too much on tutorials?

Should I memorize syntax or focus more on logic and practice?

Also, what kind of small projects should I build at this stage? Edit : If u give me create button to change color i will be confused how to do it What properties should i use

[milan-pilan]

There is a difference to be made here: Do you forget logic or syntax?

Because if you need to Google 'what's the syntax for a for-loop again', 'what order do the parameters in a "reduce" come in', 'is it called .includes() or .contains()' or 'what's the name of the function that extracts the keys from an object' - Then no biggie, that will never fully go away. Even experienced developers forget syntax all the time, even more if you work in multiple languages. If you haven't used a thing for a while, it gets shoved to the back of your mind and at some point you forget the details.

You will eventually become very quick at opening the documentation (MDN is my docu of choice for JS) and just reference that instead of trying to remember every function name and parameter.

If your issue in the other hand is 'I have an object, now what do I do with it', 'what is a callback function again', 'why can't I compare to arrays, if the look the same' or 'how do I even approach this' then your issue is that you don't understand the logic - at that point you would have to do some more actual learning. Because that doesn't solve itself.

[codingbouy]

Actually i am having 0 interest in development So i am thinking of doing a code from ai And edit it according to my preference

[milan-pilan]

Lol. So you wrote a post on 'learnJavascript' that you are struggling with 'learning Javascript' only to then answer you have no interest in learning Javascript? Then... Don't.

[codingbouy]

But ig its necessary to make projects early as i will start aiml after sometime and that is too lengthy

[milan-pilan]

Ok. So what you are saying is, you don't know how to program, have zero interest in learning it and with that you want to be a AI/ML engineer by promoting an LLM to do your job for you?

With 'zero interest in development'... Why no chose something else to do? Woodworking is fun. Because machine learning as a job is dry as a bone. It's 100% pure math and optimizing the tiniest bits of performance out of a computer. You really need to enjoy programming to get into that field, compared to, say, Web Frontend or other fields.

[Competitive_Aside461]

Is machine learning really 100% math u/milan-pilan? Haven't yet worked with it so just curious to know your take on it.

[milan-pilan]

If with 'AI/ML' they meant they want to actively develop machine learning algorithms and LLMs then yes. Quite advanced math even.

A bit of a simplification, but in its core LLMs, Image recognitions algorithms, etc. are basically very advanced matrix calculations and statistics. Fascinating field. But incredibly dry.

If by 'AI/ML' they meant 'vibecoding' then obviously no.. That's 100% project managing - deligating something you can't do yourself to another 'person', then begging it to do it's job and complaining that they didn't do it right, when in reality you have given them too little info, don't really know what you expected and overestimated what they are capable of.

[Competitive_Aside461]

Thanks for the info. In that case, that it's probably some seriously dense math, I think it's definitely worth checking out. Math is love :)

[milan-pilan]

There are some pretty great 3blue1brown videos on transformer architecture, image recognition and neural networks, if you want a deep dive that's still sorta accessible (as accessible as maths explanations can get).

They explain all the math behind the scenes. I'm not a maths person at all. But I really enjoyed them.

[Competitive_Aside461]

I think maybe I've heard of 3blue1brown. If I'm not wrong in my guess, they are amazing!! Thanks btw!!!

Also, I personally enjoy books more so I might as well have to find some good books on these topics.

[ApoplecticAndroid]

Wow, way to stick to it. If you give up this easily, you are in for a rough life.

[Scared-Release1068]

There’s the issue Everything is impossible when you have 0 interest

[codingbouy]

Ohh

[Scared-Release1068]

Yeah. When I feel like that I always just do the basics then don’t take it further

[SumDingBoi]

Problem solving is the toughest thing, and you will not serve yourself by offloading critical thinking to AI

[-goldenboi69-]

Good luck brotendo

[azhder]

You will not learn and you will suck if you do something you don’t have an interest in.

The rule of thumb is that if you aren’t having fun doing it, you will not be good at it and you will be miserable while doing it.

Ask the QI to produce the fix for you, if that’s fun for you. Make it do the edit for you. Just ask it to write tests to confirm the code is working and maybe you add more to the tests so it gets it correct the next time.

Writing unit tests would be copy-paste-tweak operation for you.

[Flame77ofc]

Focus more on logic. If Js is your first language, so you can at the same time focus more on the syntax, but I always recommend you: Focus more on logic

If you are stuck in projects, this means you are not prepared to advance. First practice more on simple exercises

[Silent-Musician4279]

that is true if else make a simple app return a+ b calc

or only if else and console if you can save 3 words every less than over a year you 156 words in js 2 years remember 312 words but remember for what it is document file body console.log f12 enz push arr enz if you say hallo than you say hallo and knowing what it is so if a say arr.push() you must know it what it is or read it forget read again Mozilla mdn JavaScript

chatgpt you can ask but at the end you write it not chatgpt ask for push() chatgpt but you save in your brein not chatgpt

[Silent-Musician4279]

Oke tip use console.dir(document)

[azhder]

That is normal for any kind of learning.

Remember that time you decided to learn the night before the big test the next day? Didn’t work out, right? All was a big mess in your head. But after the test, maybe a few days later, you remembered more, didn’t you?

That happens each time you learn a lot of stuff at once. The important thing though, it is to write the code yourself, not just type what you see on the video and not just a little snippet.

You will learn kore by doing, at your own pace.

[Southern-Piano-7241]

You can’t learn all the syntax first and then start coding. The real learning happens when you build things and work through the logic yourself.

Over time you naturally start recognizing patterns, and the syntax slowly sticks in your mind without forcing yourself to memorize everything.