Course Corrections

Feedback Loop

I'm really stoked that I found someone who's willing to mentor me in this journey by touching base with me once a week. In talking with my mentor, I realized that the JavaScript30 course was just a little beyond my current understanding of JavaScript. So, after my mentor looked over The Odin Project (TOP), they recommended that I do the JavaScript Basics section of TOP's Foundations course. 

The Odin Project

I'm almost 40% though the TOP's JavaScript Basics section. I'm realizing that the articles selected by TOP are very comprehensive. These articles cover a lot more ground from a lot more angles than the Udemy courses I had used to learn HTML and CSS. I believe my basic understanding of JavaScript is getting bolstered and there's plenty of projects that force me to apply my knowledge and develop my skills.  

Self-Awareness

The ability to have an awareness of your learning is key--especially when you're finding the resources on your own. I thought I was prepared for the JavaScript30 course, but I was self-aware enough to recognize, after 4 days, that I was mostly just following along in some videos and not learning a whole lot. In talking with my mentor, it just affirmed what I had recognized--I needed more basics before I jump into something like the JavaScript30 course. For those of you learning how to code on your own, pay attention to how you're learning. Don't be afraid to stop something even if you just started. There's plenty of good resources out there, find the one(s) that help you learn what you need to know.

Tim David

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Confronting Busyness

 Accepting Busyness I've been able to up the hours I'm putting into coding. I've been surpassing 6 hours a week pretty consistently. I'm proud to nearly double what I was putting in before. However, my hope to code on the weekends continues to be unrealized. The realities of being a responsible adult keep catching up with me on the weekend and coding keeps getting dropped in the juggling act. And that's okay. My goal is ambitious, but my current job is flexible. If I need another month (or two) before I've got the skills needed to land a job I'm really wanting, they will work with me. I'm really glad to have that kind of buffer, especially now that learning everything come January looks less and less realistic every week that goes by. Streamlining Processes I'm getting better at recognizing when I've hit a wall and then changing my approach to break through that wall. I'm in the midst of building a to do list web app and there's a lot of
Read more

My Coding Journey: Part 2

 The Pivot Sometimes you have your head down for a long time and you really need to come up for air. That's what I realized in April. I was on this fairly straightforward path of becoming a web developer (see the previous post) but I had committed to this path before I understood programming enough to consider a variety of options. I decided to take a short break and come up for air, smell the roses, and talk to people. I started talking to friends and friends-of-friends who are currently working in tech. I asked them how they got into tech and if they had any advice for a self-taught programmer. This was very helpful at this stage since I had been programming for a few months now and could actually understand a lot of the jargon my friends ended up throwing around. And this gave me some perspective. The Perspective Being able to talk to friends in the tech industry was super helpful and I also returned to YouTube for a few hours (not all at once). I had come to this realization wh
Read more

My Coding Journey: Part 1

 The Decision Any good story has an interesting beginning, and I like to think my story does. I had just graduated from Colorado State University with my B.S. in Psychology. I applied for jobs left, right, and center (I'm looking at you Indeed). I ended up getting a few offers, but nothing I actually wanted to do--either the pay was to low or I could clean carpets, so no thanks. I decided I was done with school and I wanted to find something that would pay well and also be interesting to do. I ended up landing on learning to code as I considered my various options. I have been a little bit of a tech hobbyist--trying different Linux distros, following the latest devices in tech, that kind of thing. So I decided to give it a low-stakes investigation. After all, if I hated it, I could just dip and then figure something else out instead. The Path I ended up watching a lot of YouTube videos to figure out how the hecking hey to teach yourself how to tell dumb computers to do smart things
Read more