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B G
1,866 PointsI have not been able to do any of the challenges on my own. Am I supposed to be able to do these on my own?
Not able to do any of the challenges without looking at the answer videos. Am I suppose to be able to do these without looking? Looking at the video I wouldn't of even got close to what he was doing.
Carlos Lantigua
5,938 PointsI have taken a few other JS courses online before this one and though this one does the best job of explaining it, I find that taking notes has been the difference maker this time around. By stopping the videos when key explanations come around and writing out examples and definitions I am able to go back right away when I need to look stuff up. On some occasions I would have to consult the wise googles for some help but for the most part notes have been crucial. Try this out if you're still feeling lost or stuck, I've only done this track so far and I have 6 pages front and back. Treat it like if you were in school again, cos you technically are.. hope this helps you in some way as I struggle with it too and this was the only thing that helped me out..
5 Answers
Jillian S. Estrella (she/her)
15,720 PointsIf your new to coding it might take a bit. A lot of the patterns you will start to know/recognize from experience. Hang in and don’t give up.
Another thing that helps is if you take notes or screenshots of key points in the video and use that to reference while working the challenges.
S Ananda
9,474 PointsI would like to encourage you to keep at it. Watch the videos several times, until what they say makes sense. What I found really helped me was to watch and do the video the first time. The second time just watch the video and refer to what I did (you can see all the coding, whereas on the video you can't always). It is like learning a very complex foreign language, like Chinese, so you are bound to be stumped by simple things in the beginning. It took me about six months before it wasn't all a big mystery and just recently, after a year and a half, I had a major breakthrough and much of what I couldn't do before I'm being able to do without help. So, just keep at it. It will come.
B G
1,866 PointsThank you. I am definitely not giving up. I am just trying to measure my abilities to others at this point. This is definitely more complicated the CSS and HTML. I am really excited about the possibilities of JavaScript but I don't see me learning it in a few weeks like HTML and CSS. I am reaching my stretching point when it comes to taking in everything and applying it to the challenges. I was just wondering if I was the only one.
Jillian S. Estrella (she/her)
15,720 PointsYour doing just fine. Most programmers don’t memorize every little syntactical oddity or built in method. That’s what the documentation is for ;-) once your up to speed you’ll reference the docs as you need.
Also, my opinion, JavaScript is one of the harder programming languages to learn. It’s quirky. If you can learn JavaScript, you can learn anything. The concept of JavaScript fatigue is very real - learning it can be a bit of a whirl wind. Especially when you go beyond the basics and when you start diving into every new flavor of the month framework. The JavaScript community seems to suffer from attention deficit disorder in that regard. However, it’s also a fun, vibrant, productive, and rewarding community to be a part of. Stick with it - all of your pain and anguish will pay off :-)
Also, if you’ve never programmed before ever. You might want to check out something like Python first. It’s a much easier introduction to the world of programming. Python is very intuitive to work with and it’s super powerful and versatile. However, it doesn’t run in the browser so you can’t perform DOM manipulation with it (that’s one advantage JavaScript has). But you can write some really good server side web apps (flask/web2py/Django). So if dom manipulation is your only end goal with programming then perhaps you wouldn’t want to bother. Otherwise it’s very much worth knowing.
B G
1,866 PointsThanks Jonathan!
paulgaray6
2,830 PointsI am new to programming. I feel stupid when I can't solve the challenges on my own. When I look up the solutions video, my train of thought is far from the solution. There are days when I doubt myself - whether I could make it as a programmer.
But like what the others have mentioned, learning takes time especially Javascript. It won't be intuitive at first but the key is to stick to it.
Ryan Richard
15,476 PointsRyan Richard
15,476 PointsThe different videos and coding challenges build on each other. It can be hard to take a concept that you just learned and then turn that into the code. What I would suggest is to go back over the video, multiple times if you have to, and make sure you got the concept. Also, I would take a look at the teacher's notes and look at any documentation that they might have suggested because that is where you will be gleaning a lot of real-world information from.
Hopefully, this helps. Make sure not to rush it because everyone learns at a different pace.