Learning how to code is like a love-hate relationship. You will love it when you can solve problems, one of the greatest feelings in the world, and you will hate getting stuck, believe me, you’ll curse a lot yell at the computer, you’ll get frustrated and think that maybe you were just not made to code.
Well, I strongly believe that anyone can learn new things, being that learning how to code or cooking. I’m currently on this journey and I’ve some tips for you if you are just starting.
Practice, practice, practice….
That’s right, you’ll not learn if you don’t dedicate some time to practice even if it is just half an hour. Some authors will disagree with me, but I think some tutorials and replicate the code is a great way to start, mainly because you’ll start developing some muscle memory and get comfortable writing. This leads to my next point.
Research everything new you’ll found in the tutorial
Write down things like JavaScript methods and properties that are new to you and start to research about then. For this purpose, I strongly recommend MDN Web Docs by Mozilla since its always updated.
Make time to read about code
Pick up some book for maybe half an hour, pick a topic, for example, JavaScript arrays and read about it. You don’t need to read the whole book, just the topics that you need to understand for the moment.
Besides books, there are several sites and Youtube channels that can help enlighten you on certain topics. These are my recommendations:
- - Kevin Powell is just a great teacher. Think of him as the Bob Ross of CSS.
- - Traversy Media by Brad Traversy. One of the best teachers that cover almost all technologies related to code.
- - DevEd. A channel with a lot of tutorials mainly towards front-end technologies. The guy is just great and really funny.
- - As for websites, CSS-Tricks is just my go-to site for front-end related articles.
- - Another great resource is Smashing Magazine. Just check it out, you'll love it.
Try to find a tutor
This is important. When you are just starting is just great to have someone to talk to and get some help when you are stuck. What’s great about the developer’s community is that they are just great at helping out one another.
This is my take on some tips that can help you get the spark going. Sometimes it's hard to find the time, believe me since I’m married and a father of two toddlers, so I understand that not always you can stick to the plan, but at least try. That’s what I try to do and I’m still learning.
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