I've been studying front-end web development for about 9 months now, my journey started during the Covid-19 lock down and with all this free time on my hands I decided to learn a new skill. I've always wanted to know how a website was made so I decided to learn web-development. Throughout the 9 months of learning I hit road bumps and failures but through those failures/mistakes I've learned a lot which has turned me into a better developer today and I wanted to share some advice to those who are about to embark on this journey.
Build Your Own Projects
How can I build a project if I don't know how?
The best way to learn is by building. Building a project on your own creates this environment for you to learn new things everyday instead of watching YouTube tutorials and following instructions. Watching tutorials and following some sort of "recipe" takes away creativity and the ability to apply concepts in different situations. In building your own stuff, you'll be able to learn concepts and adapt your code to fit your needs.
Try Avoiding Tutorials
But tutorials are great!
Don't get me wrong, tutorials have saved my a** many times, but you shouldn't rely on them as much. If you get into the habit of just following tutorials, there will be some point in your journey where you're trying to make something, but you can't because you've been blindly following other people code assuming you'd know what to do right after the video, hence why my first advice was to build your own projects. Use videos as references.
Join a Community
How does a community benefit me?
There are millions of developers around the world, each with their own set of knowledge and experiences, some new just like you, and some who have been in the industry for quite some time. Many of these people have created groups/communities to help each other out and developing this friendly environment where everyone can just grow and share new ideas to one another, and if you're ever stuck on a problem there's always someone with a solution.
Take Breaks
I can't stress this enough!!!
Mental health is important and burnout is a huge problem for developers. Spending too much time coding and solving problems can cause you to question your abilities and eventually lose motivation. If you're ever feeling frustrated over some problem you're trying to solve, take a break, do something that'll take your mind off it and just hit a reset so that the next time you come back to it, you'll be looking at it with a fresh mindset.
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