Hi! I'm new to this website and coding in general, I've been ''studying'' for about 2 weeks. I bought 5 webdev courses on Udemy (Front end bootcamp, Javascript Essentials, CSS, Advanced CSS, Flex, etc.. etc...) with a total of 150 ish hours of lessons.
I'm about 25 hours in and I've mostly just been watching the lessons and copying what they're doing to VS Code on my other screen.
Although I feel like I'm learning it feels like I wouldn't be able to do it on my own without seeing someone else do it first.
Is there a website with cool projects for beginners to practice?
Obviously I would need google and some documentation but I don't wanna just ''copy'' someone because I feel I need to learn to do it on my own, does that make sense?
Thanks!
Top comments (3)
First thing I will say if you are a student at a university (have a university email address) get the GitHub Student Developer Pack. So many free resources its amazing.
Here is a post about copy and past tutorials (codeburst.io is a great resource in general)
codeburst.io/why-you-should-be-doi...
Secondly, establish some goals using roadmap.sh/
I am in a similar position. I attended a Coding Bootcamp 3 years ago, and have now renewed my interest in programming, I have spent more time looking for resources, project tutorials, and spent way too much time overthinking whether I should relearn and redo the projects from my Bootcamp to regain my understanding. It is good you have enrolled in specific courses, as those will give you the foundation for how to start something. To start, you should not be copying and pasting code. It may be a pain, but actually typing out the code, even if it is a hand holding step by step project tutorial, typing out the code will eventually lead to a better understanding of what you are actually doing, and what each line of code is doing. Beyond that, choose some simple applications that have been built by a ton of people, such as a to-do list, calculator app, or something pretty basic, and start it on your own. There are so many youtube project tutorials that dive into advanced topics, and for the simple applications that you can use those as resources to help you along the way, but rather than following along step by step, start trying to think of things you want to add to the application whether it be an added feature or playing around with JavaScript to add cool effects to your application, or just different syling. There are plenty of resources for project ideas. Florin Pop has a great YouTube channel and github repo with project ideas github.com/florinpop17. The more you code, the better your understanding will be, so even if you are just following along to make a few advanced applications, over time the concepts will become clearer and you will actually feel like you can do things completely on your own. It took me a while to get there, and with all this time off of coding I have retained some knowledge, but diving back into the more advanced projects I was doing led to frustration, so I have taken the approach of doing the little things to build myself up. FreeCodeCamp, and the Odin Project are great tools to use to understand concepts as you are not given the answers to everything. There are hundreds of fantastic YouTube channels that consist of project tutorials as well as concept overviews. With coding you truly do get better the more you do, even if some of the things you do are step by step guides. Just focus on actually getting something out of each thing you do rather than copying and pasting things and over time, things will start to become much clearer, and you will get to a point where you will feel like you are learning a lot.
The biggest thing I have learned in the world of programming is that there are so many people out there that enjoy helping one another, which can make finding the "right" resource overwhelming, but once you actually commit to something, the amount of information available for free is amazing, and the number of people actively looking to help others out is astounding as well.
Traversey Media has concept overview courses on just about every language, library and framework used in web development in 2020, as well as tons of project tutorials in various languages and using different frameworks. If you want to stick to JavaScript there are tons of JavaScript only channels. A simple google search of best coding tutorial youtube channels will lead you to tons of resources. Here are some links I have come across: careerkarma.com/blog/top-coding-yo...
cloudways.com/blog/best-youtube-ch...
*These are some of the resources I have been utilizing since getting back into coding this past month or so. It has been overwhelming for me to pick one thing and stick to it, but once I did, the progress I have made has been much better than expected.
Other great resources: (Check your local library to see if you can get access to free Lynda.com membership as many offer it)
edx and MIT have some great free courses (edx requires payment for certification)
hackernoon.com/
codelabs.developers.google.com/
medium.com/technoetics
blog.duomly.com/tags/javascript/
stackshare.io/
coderprog.com/ (free downloadable books and courses)
github.com/collections/learn-to-code
Thank you ! I’ll bookmark all these links ! 😀
I myself am in a similar situation, while I don’t know of any websites that give you practice projects. I will say edabit.com/challenges
is a great resource for practicing simple algorithm challenges that will help your coding skills.