It’s been two weeks now that I am into Javascript and I can’t believe the feeling I get each time I look at the code and it’s not plain gibberish anymore. Sure, I am far from reading it fast and understanding what it means yet I recognize parts of it and that makes me excited because just moments ago it seems, I couldn’t understand a thing.
And this is one of the things I have noticed with other programmers whose talks I watch – they seem to be excited about coding beyond normal. And I get it. I don’t think there are many things to compare to the feeling of writing code and see it come alive.
It gets even weirder when I get an error message and I can patiently work on solving it. Weird right?
My current learning materials:
I use three main sources picking a section and going in deep from three different perspectives:
- Udemy Course – Andrei Neagoie “The Complete Web Developer in 2021: Zero to Mastery”;
- Book – Eric Freeman & Elisabeth Robson “Head First Javascript Programming”;
- Udemy Course – Angela Yu “The Complete Web Development Bootcamp”.
I enjoy all these different tools and they do give me different points to concentrate on even though it seems like they are teaching the same thing.
Learning and playing can be painful
It’s far from pink roses for me yet. The deeper I get, the slower I become at understanding just the basic of “Why do we need this?”.
I watch tutorials and some of them seem to fail at explaining in plain terms the pure purpose of a single line of code and then while learning that bit of information I feel like I am given an ax in pure darkness, I kind of know it’s an ax and that I am in the forest, and I need wood to light a fire, but I have no idea where to swing.
I am sure a lot of the things will make sense once I do understand the purpose, but I am slowed down by touching around myself for that tree trunk. It is a skill to be able to explain something you are an expert of in easy to grasp terms, and I do feel like a five-year-old with most things in Javascript.
It is discouraging and I did lose motivation for a bit while learning the DOM bit, but persevered and finished it. At the time of writing, I am turning to a book hoping to get more clarity with what the hell it all supposed to mean. Because it all works very beautifully when I am following an instructor but once I am left on my own, I don’t even know where to start and I just feel silly for even trying. Then I blame my age and the fact that I could have gone into it way earlier when my brain was still accepting new information at a normal rate, or even better before I had a clingy baby who needs something every five minutes and hence my mind is all over the place and in the end, I can’t connect the dots.
Not very inspirational, I am sorry.
But I know that things will click because I am not giving in to my excuses and whining.
LEARNING TO CODE AT MY AGE FEELS LIKE I AM PLAYING IN A SANDBOX WHILE WEARING MY SILK DRESS SUIT.
The amount of times I ask myself is it all worth it is appalling.
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