What to do after you consumed a coding course
The answer would be a very simple one for me. Watch another one on the same topic. I use Udemy and it’s great for finding multiple cheap choices (when they are on sale, which is almost always) on the same topic (there is a world of choice for coding). But I have found that sometimes when trainers are teaching they like to introduce new things and say “We will talk about it later” and for someone who hears this information for the first time it just doesn’t stick to the brain, and when the moment comes and the trainer says “As mentioned before, I will be talking about B…” for you there is no connection to make because you don’t know when they mentioned it and what should you connect it to. Going back and looking all up feels tedious and unnecessary as it might be hours of content, so you happily trot on leaving a bit of a gap in the information. You kind of understand what it was about but can’t confidently place it together with any other information it was mentioned up until this point and believe that you will be fine. Sounds familiar?
I have watched enough content to know the feeling. Now the idea of taking the same topic and watching it all over again but from other trainer’s perspectives feels over the top but hear me out.
For one, each teacher has their own style of teaching and sometimes they place importance on different things than the teacher you watched just before. So regardless if it’s the same topic, you might still learn things that the other course missed, even better if the course has been updated recently and that way includes more recent information. But the most important thing is the feeling you will get when you watch the same material; that dreaded emotion of being completely green at something has dissipated. Suddenly you remember so many things from the previous course and those things that intimidated you feel harmless now. More than anything, you start to notice things that you have missed before. You are not wasting your time, you are not overusing your brain RAM, you are repeating the information and updating it with the things that got lost on the way. Suddenly you start connecting the dots with the things that you already know from the advanced part of the course to the basics of it all. Seriously I can’t recommend it enough. You can always skip the parts that you know well enough and jump to the things that need some work. But even in the basics section, you will find things that other teachers didn’t mention, or they will work with different resources. From my perspective, this is the way to become a better-rounded developer.
Don’t feel that you need to know and understand everything after completing just one course. There is so much new information every second that it’s unreasonable to expect us to know it all after watching 20 hours of content. I know the idea of watching another 20 hours of a similar thing feels counterintuitive and most people tell you to start applying that information as soon as possible and I agree, but what if you finished the course and you feel like you don’t even know what to apply?
My Advice is this:
- First of all, if you are only starting out, take the course in parts. Take for example Web Development courses; they are planned in a similar manner. We start with HTML, then CSS, then probably some Bootstrap or connected information, then JavaScript, and so on. My advice is to take each section and learn as much as you can before moving to the next (I know there are teachers who urge us to hurry through HTML & CSS, but I feel that if you didn’t understand how they work, what good JavaScript will do?).
- To really understand a topic, go through several resources, don’t rely on one course, teacher, or book. Programming languages like JavaScript are changing so fast that some courses might sound outdated even if their information on Udemy says that they are being constantly updated.
- Don’t let yourself get down if you feel like you consumed a coding course and you just don’t get it. Take a break, do something else and try again with another resource.
- I promise you, trying to learn something deeply is not the same as so feared tutorial hell that everyone calls us out about. Going through material and switching to another resource if you didn’t quite understand the topic is for your own good. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
- I know the feeling of wanting to do it quickly, but taking the slow, deep approach while learning to code is a wiser option. It’s better to be slow and intentional now than on the job.
- Don’t listen to those who say that it is easy. Sure, it might be for some – like those who have partners that are already in the field, or who have been dabbling in code as teenagers, before you listen to others saying how easy coding is, know what their background is. It is a hard skill to learn, and people who are saying how easy it is don’t make us feel better about ourselves. Take these kinds of things with a grain of reality – we all are very different, and one person might take a week to understand some concepts, but there are those who might take years. And that’s ok if you are making a progress however slow.
If you are hearing your teacher say “We will talk about it later”, know that you can always re-watch the same material at the end of the course or pick another teacher to cement the information. I am here to give you full permission (sometimes we need someone to say this stuff) to find your best resources and take it slow because you are free to choose and only you can know what works for you best.
Sending encouragement and a reminder – repetition is a mother of learning.