Freecoding proposal Yes hear me out

Renato Francia Castillo — Sat, 25 May 2019 00:05:24 +0000

TLDR;

If you go to the gym and do some reps, you get muscle.

If you practice on something hard for 1 hour a day without any help

and explaining it, you get to learn it.

OK here's my proposal:

Lately, I've been doing a programming training that I like to call

"freecoding". I got this from the term "freewriting" in which writers

would type all the things in their heads in a limited amount of time. For

example, if you want to make an essay about dogs, you would spend 30

minutes writing all you know about dogs without being bothered by

grammatical errors. After you are done with freewriting, you are ready to

put some structure in your essay.

For coding, it's sometimes the same idea. Personally, I get bothered that

I always face the same problems in design and by the time I'm done

building an app or a template, I give a quizzical look at my code

and ask if I really know what I'm doing. Or if I'll be able to understand

what I've written and coded it the same way without looking at it.

For this, I have started something I like to call "Freecoding".

I recommend to do it in an hour, but you can do it for 15 or 30 minutes.

It consists of choosing a problem or an app you have/want to work but

don't really understand the concept quite well. Then work on the

app/script for 1-hour explaining what are you coding without watching

any source to copy.

**Don't worry if the app/script doesn't work, just push yourself

to code it as a much as you remember and understand**

Remember, this is "Free" coding after all. Also, if it's not working,

ask yourself why and write it down. Once you are done with freecoding,

revisit the part you didn't understand well. Also, keep your code.

(At least for 1 week to review your progress)

For me, my problem was creating API's using express.

So, I spent 30 minutes each day working in building API's by trying

to remember how it was written. One thing I would suggest is to watch

the code before doing the freecoding and avoid all temptations of

watching the source.

Try to choose easy problems to remember. You can't make a whole app

in 1 hour, but can build a piece of it until you can try to make that

app from scratch.

This might be a very intuitive way to learn to code, but after

trying this method for two months, I feel much more confident in my

programming skills and I know how my code works to the point that I

can now improve it.

Happy coding!

DEV Community: Renato Francia Castillo