A couple things you touched on that has been good for me:
Being Organized
I cannot tell you how valuable scheduling time to learn, build projects, listen to a podcast etc. My learning immediately increased when I realized if I don't do SOMETHING almost everyday related to coding it wouldn't work. To really grasp some of these concepts it takes a lot of repetition and practice.
Practice, Practice, Practice
I took a 7 hour course from Will Sentence on Front End Masters called "Javascript The Hard Parts". In that course Will talked about the best ways to become really good not just at writing code but also your technical communication. He described that at some point the spoon fed method, your typical step by step led tutorials will eventually plateau your learning. Not anything wrong with those things. I made it this far on the Team Treehouse FullStack Tech Degree, Udemy and Front End Masters(Amazing! I highly recommend). He described what he called hard learning. Building things that challenge what you know. Solving problems without immediately jumping on StackOverflow. But also not spending so much time researching that you don't actually write any code. He said the best way to learn and challenge yourself is pair programming. Now I haven't found anyone to pair program with as I am still learning like you and also trying to find my first job as a developer. But I can see how pair programming would help in some ways. Also I spent an afternoon thinking of projects that would be fun or projects that would solve a problem for me. As a space geek(SpaceX, Blue Origins etc.) I realized I didnt have a good place to aggregate all the SpaceX Launch data so I decided to build my own using React and pulling from a open source SpaceX API. You can see the early beginnings at fargalaxy.io. So just coming up with something to start writing code that is yours has been super valuable for me.
Anyway those are just my thoughts. Thanks again for the great article. It got my mind running.
At my 30s I found out that there was a developer inside a Political Science Graduated.
I've been COO an CMO for 4 years but I decided to persue my dream and become a Front-end developer:)
Location
Elche, Alicante, Spain
Education
Certificate of Higher Education for Web Applications Development & Degree in Political Science
Hi Mike!
I am so happy that this lines were somehow useful for you!
I find your advice really interesting. You said in a previous comment to another post that you were thinking of writing more about your job. Any improvements so far? :)
What is pairing programming? Sounds interesting.
I will take a look at this course JavaScript the Hard Parts. Definitely I always try to avoid looking for pre-made solutions at first. Just like I did with the Simon Game. Besides, Stackoverflow is not always clear for a complete noob.
Thank you reading and sharing.
I am a little timid about writing something. Haha. And I am not sure what to write.
Pair programming is basically you have 2 people. One "Driver" and one "Navigator". The navigator has to clearly defined for the driver how they want to write the code. The driver has to interpret the instructions into code. The driver can't jump in and say maybe we should try this or that and the navigator can't jump in a say let me show you how to write that piece of code. Then every so often you switch. That the boiled down version. Im sure their is a better explanation but that is kind of how I understand it.
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Great Article Nadine! SO many good tips.
A couple things you touched on that has been good for me:
Being Organized
I cannot tell you how valuable scheduling time to learn, build projects, listen to a podcast etc. My learning immediately increased when I realized if I don't do SOMETHING almost everyday related to coding it wouldn't work. To really grasp some of these concepts it takes a lot of repetition and practice.
Practice, Practice, Practice
I took a 7 hour course from Will Sentence on Front End Masters called "Javascript The Hard Parts". In that course Will talked about the best ways to become really good not just at writing code but also your technical communication. He described that at some point the spoon fed method, your typical step by step led tutorials will eventually plateau your learning. Not anything wrong with those things. I made it this far on the Team Treehouse FullStack Tech Degree, Udemy and Front End Masters(Amazing! I highly recommend). He described what he called hard learning. Building things that challenge what you know. Solving problems without immediately jumping on StackOverflow. But also not spending so much time researching that you don't actually write any code. He said the best way to learn and challenge yourself is pair programming. Now I haven't found anyone to pair program with as I am still learning like you and also trying to find my first job as a developer. But I can see how pair programming would help in some ways. Also I spent an afternoon thinking of projects that would be fun or projects that would solve a problem for me. As a space geek(SpaceX, Blue Origins etc.) I realized I didnt have a good place to aggregate all the SpaceX Launch data so I decided to build my own using React and pulling from a open source SpaceX API. You can see the early beginnings at fargalaxy.io. So just coming up with something to start writing code that is yours has been super valuable for me.
Anyway those are just my thoughts. Thanks again for the great article. It got my mind running.
Hi Mike!
I am so happy that this lines were somehow useful for you!
I find your advice really interesting. You said in a previous comment to another post that you were thinking of writing more about your job. Any improvements so far? :)
What is pairing programming? Sounds interesting.
I will take a look at this course JavaScript the Hard Parts. Definitely I always try to avoid looking for pre-made solutions at first. Just like I did with the Simon Game. Besides, Stackoverflow is not always clear for a complete noob.
Thank you reading and sharing.
I am a little timid about writing something. Haha. And I am not sure what to write.
Pair programming is basically you have 2 people. One "Driver" and one "Navigator". The navigator has to clearly defined for the driver how they want to write the code. The driver has to interpret the instructions into code. The driver can't jump in and say maybe we should try this or that and the navigator can't jump in a say let me show you how to write that piece of code. Then every so often you switch. That the boiled down version. Im sure their is a better explanation but that is kind of how I understand it.