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A lot of programmers who have an easy time coding (even in a new language) are relying on several years of experience and StackOverflow. When I look at a select

A lot of programmers who have an easy time coding (even in a new language) are relying on several years of experience and StackOverflow. When I look at a select box on a page, my brain automatically thinks "okay, was this rendered using HTML or JS? what styles have been applied? is there an onchange callback? how is the data being populated? what's the data model look like? is it using two-way data binding or posting with a form?" I can only speculate about these aspects because I've had to build them all before. I absolutely struggled when I first had to deal with new concepts like Javascript frameworks or unit testing, but after sticking it out for a few months, I was able to internalize how they work and see the underlying design patterns, rather than just the implementation details. If you could elaborate on certain issues that you're running into, we might be able to give you more insight into what exactly is tricky about it.

pskittle 12y ago
Thanks for the comments. When I get stuck i look up stackoverflow and various other forums for help and may or may not find the answer to the problem. However I feel like they're bandaid solutions and i can follow instructions to make things work but don't understand why the errors occur. Also what can prevent such errors in the future and how can i feel confident as a coder.
- jkaykin 12y ago
  Honestly, this was me for a long time and I believe many programmers go through this. When trying to build a project, I would look things up on stackoverflow and try to follow tutorials, but then I would do something that caused an error and I had no idea how to fix it. I thought I broke it for good and just abandoned the project. This happened many times with many projects. I became so frustrated, I wanted to give up. But I couldn't. After a while, I became more confident and began to understand what things meant, and how to fix errors (all from just struggling with the language). There was this long period of struggling to get things to work but I feel like there was this moment where a switch turned on and I began to feel more confident writing code and solving problems. My recommendation is you keep on struggling. Keep on messing up and embrace failure. Eventually, you'll figure it out. Enjoy the journey of learning to code, don't be so fixed on being the best right away.

pskittle 12y ago

Thanks for the comments. When I get stuck i look up stackoverflow and various other forums for help and may or may not find the answer to the problem. However I feel like they're bandaid solutions and i can follow instructions to make things work but don't understand why the errors occur. Also what can prevent such errors in the future and how can i feel confident as a coder.

jkaykin 12y ago
Honestly, this was me for a long time and I believe many programmers go through this. When trying to build a project, I would look things up on stackoverflow and try to follow tutorials, but then I would do something that caused an error and I had no idea how to fix it. I thought I broke it for good and just abandoned the project. This happened many times with many projects. I became so frustrated, I wanted to give up. But I couldn't. After a while, I became more confident and began to understand what things meant, and how to fix errors (all from just struggling with the language). There was this long period of struggling to get things to work but I feel like there was this moment where a switch turned on and I began to feel more confident writing code and solving problems. My recommendation is you keep on struggling. Keep on messing up and embrace failure. Eventually, you'll figure it out. Enjoy the journey of learning to code, don't be so fixed on being the best right away.