DEV Community: Carlos Orelhas

How I escape from tutorial Purgatory

Carlos Orelhas — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 22:04:42 +0000

A few months ago I wrote this post and from this day until 01-FEV I have worked in a personal project, you can see what I build below.

Vimeo:

If this project was perfect? Without bugs? Absolutely not but, hey it's my first project ok?

When I finished the project above I started thinking about what I can do to get better and to learn more, so I start working with more frameworks, using APIS, build an entire CRUD application and I did well so far.

My Plan

    * Month 1 - Learn everything I can (syntax etc)
    * Month 2 - Start building my own project
    * Month 3 - Month 5 - Finish my first project

Wow! So you spend almost 5 months doing the project above? Yes! Why? Because every time I get stuck I read the whole documentation about the technology I'm using.

Month 1

FreeCodeCamp, Documentation, Udemy, Scrimba, PluralSight. I spent the whole month learning how JavaScript syntax is, how to use vanilla JS, how to use handlebars, how to use MongoDB, how to use express, how I can make a register/login and validation. It's a hard month if you are asking, it's overwhelming!!

Month 2

I've decided that I wanted to build the project above so I started building the project, making some sketch (design, database Schemas, etc..), get stuck, build at least 1 new function per day (I failed this point), and so on.

Month 3 / Month 5

During this month I faced many difficulties because I didn’t know how to work properly in getting info from my MongoDB, how handlebars works etc.

What I learned after this 'mess'?

Well, If I haven’t started a project, if I didn’t get stuck, If I didn’t have doubts, I wouldn’t have placed myself in front of a whiteboard thinking about what I should’ve done to make things work.

So What? What's my plan for everyone escapes from Tutorial Purgatory?
If I've started again, I've followed the same plan. Why?
Because I get my hands' dirt from the beginning, I put myself in awkward situations, I get stuck over and over, I've spent days looking into documentation, I've done my own work and smashed my keyboard looking for solutions, looking for results.

The ideal plan (for me worked fine)

Spend the first month or two looking for documentation, looking for tutorials, looking for courses, take some notes, write what you learn, don't try to get everything only on your mind because it doesn't work well. Learn the basics about the language you choose, understand basic structures, learn debbuging, algorithm.
When you deal well with the points above, just jump into some basic project, forget about tic tac toes, to-dos and so on, it only makes you burning precious time and weeks and if you are into programming to get a job, my friend, companies don't care about your To-Do or your Tic Tac Toes. Why?? Because everyone does the same and if you want the company to look into your profile, you should be different, make things different!

I hope my path gives you some ideas and you can escape from tutorial purgatory since it's complicated to jump from tutorials and start working in your own project, but it's the best way!

I've started using my Instagram account to share my work, what I'm working on, my projects, and some snippets (how to make an express server, how to connect your server with MongoDB...) and it really helps me because sometimes I need to learn enough to explain to others.

Feel free to follow, drop some comments :))
Instagram

Channel to share knowledge

Carlos Orelhas — Mon, 20 Jan 2020 20:05:17 +0000

Hey Everyone,

After a while working with programming Stuff and get stuck many times I have decided to 'build' a discord channel for everyone who wants to join, beginner, junior, senior, expert, everyone!

What's the purpose?

I just want to open a space where all of us can share knowledge with other people, help with side projects and collabs every member.

What I need to join?

Nothing!!! Just an account with discord and join via this link below

Discord Channel

What can I do in the channel?

You can chat with other members(write or talk) and get experience for members with a tons of experience. Other side If you are skilled, you can discuss with another expert members and make change of ideas.

Probably here you can discuss some career advices from expert members!

Hope to see everyone there!

Build charts with nodejs + canvasJS + mongodb

Carlos Orelhas — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 15:28:35 +0000

Hey everyone !!

I'm working on my first real project and I have some trouble to show a chart with data from mongoDB..

This is what I have inside my handlebars with HTML

And inside the same handlebar opened a script tag and inserted the following code

But on my routes folder, I have this ROUTER.GET and this way I can pass every expense from MongoDB inside Handlebars.

The way I have the preview code, it shows me a chart with the dataPoints I inserted in the script, but I don't know how can refactor and inside the router.get I can access the information and build the chart with the data from mongodb..

How can I use the router file to build the chart with mongodb data?

How I deal with my 9-5 when I still learning Programming?

Carlos Orelhas — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 09:04:35 +0000

Many times I see people here asking how can learn any programming language when they have their 9-5 work. How to get space in our day to learn what we want.
And looking at these topics I decided to share with you my daily when I work with the 9-5 job (in fact this isn't a 9-5 job and you will understand soon).

For my first step, I looked at my daily routine and see what times I have with anything (no job, no exercise, nothing) and I figured out during my day, we have a lot of time even when we just say to us we don't have enough time.

I go to a job every day (Monday to Friday) at 9 AM and at 1 PM it's my lunch hour. I have 1:30 hour for my lunch and come back to work at 2:30 PM. I work at 6:30 PM (this is what I mean when I say I don't work in a 9-5 job and know you can understand why). After the work, I do a 1hour or 1hour30 of exercise and after this, I just take a shower, eat and watch NetFlix or something else on the TV.
This is what I do before understand my day and what 'dead' times I have.

After this, I just sit and try to figure out how I can change my daily routine to optimize better my time.

So I just understand if every morning I wake up at 7 AM and do some tutorial, follow some courses, or just doing FCC curriculum I have enough time until 8 AM, time to take a shower, eat and pack everything to another workday. Here I have 1 hour every day to learn.
In my lunch hour, every day I finish my meal at 1:30 PM so until 2:15 PM I read a book (not necessarily a programming book, probably just a book you like).

When I finish my work at 6:30 PM and I do my daily workout and I finish at 8 PM after taking a shower and eat I just stop watching NetFlix and get my hands 'dirty' with more learning. Before sleep, I read 15/20minutes.

So after these changes every day I have more time for me, to learn, to read and to rest.

Pick your calculator and do the math with me:

-> 1 hour every morning to learn;
-> 45 minutes on my lunch hour to read;
-> From 8 PM to 11 PM ( 3 hours) and here I spend 1 hour with new Languages (English, Dutch, French or something else);
-> 11 PM to 11:15 PM read (15 minute);

Well... Every day I have 4 hours to learning new stuff here I include programming languages and languages in general, I have 1 hour of reading and the most important, at least 7 hours of sleep which is important for me.

I hope can help you to figure out how you can optimize your day whit my example.

If you want to connect, I drop here my twitter (https://twitter.com/Carlos_Orelhas).

Development in Skype Group

Carlos Orelhas — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 15:56:05 +0000

Hello everybody !!
I'm looking for some group where we can learn together with voice, like skype or something else where we invite people and we can work together and teach what we know to another person and vice versa.
Does someone know something about it?