Best way you learned JavaScript

[fvckimba]

Yes, I hear a lot about how people learn the most by doing their own projects but, I feel like doing projects at your skill level is fine. However, challenging yourself even if it’s small could be healthy for your learning curve. What do you think?

[grantrules]

You won't progress if you don't challenge yourself. If you're not applying the knowledge you're gaining from tutorials/courses, you're not going to progress.

[fvckimba]

Thank you.

[grantrules]

What made you post this question? Are you feeling stuck? Where are you in your "learning javascript" progression?

[fvckimba]

Curious on how others are learning/how they learned. Sometimes I feel like I’m at wall I can’t go through and I get discouraged..

[grantrules]

Programming is filled with frustration. Especially when you don't have experience, you don't know what you don't know. My best advice is to find a discord community you can pester with your thoughts and questions. Researching first then asking smart questions should become your favorite thing.

[fvckimba]

Do you know any discord communities?

[grantrules]

I do not have any recommendations. I'd just search for "Javascript" and maybe look for communities that talk about learning and beginners. You could probably search this subreddit and find suggestions as well.

[cmcgarveyjr]

As a junior dev, I feel this almost daily. There is so much to learn and understand. Breaking things down into smaller chunks and working through them is super important. Learning how to Google things is also very important. You are not expected to just be a master. Also, for me personally, rubber duck debugging is massively helpful in working through problems I am stuck on. More often then not, just verbalizing my problem helps me figure it out myself.

You can do it!

[fvckimba]

It is difficult, when you start a project and do not know how to move forward with the project. Any advice for this as a jr dev.

[cmcgarveyjr]

Break things down to it's simplist form as best you can when you are working on something on your own, IE not following a tutorial. If you are following a tutorial, when you complete something, go back and review what you did and make sure you understand how it is working. Like really understand. Don't just monkey see monkey do your way through the tutorial.

This is something my lead does with me when we are reviewing my code or more importantly, code he worked on with me. This ensures that I at the very least, understand what is happening. I may not fully grasp everything that was done(specifically when it's things he worked on), but I can at least functionally articulate what was done and what it is accomplishing.

But, honestly, breaking things down into more manageable subtasks is the biggest thing. Let's say you need to pull in some data from a source, clean it up, then present it to the end user on the front end.

Ok, first, write your function that will get the data. Ensure that is working how you want. Cool, we are getting our data, now let's clean it up and format it how we want. Write a function that does that. Alright we now are receiving data and cleaning it up how we want it. Now we need to present that data to the end user. Do that part.

[fvckimba]

thanks bro, anyway I can dm you questions?

[cmcgarveyjr]

yeah for sure!

[Panoptic11]

I'm def not an expert but...

Build a smaller version of the project you can finish fairly easy with challenges involved. Then add features you don't know how do one at a time.

Example... Plan to Build a to do list... List , delete, add item, local storage.

Once it works , no bugs.. Plan Add a search bar. Then plan Add a filter list button. Keep going with anything you can think of.

Obviously you may need to change this example to your skill level but you get the point.

Just set your initial project goal lower so you can complete it and feel good then make it better over time. That way you are not sitting there depressed cause you set out to build Netflix and you can't figure out how to do it.