If you've started learning web development anytime within the past 2 years, you will no doubt be familiar with the ways of life as a new learner: read about all the new tech and go through the hundreds of tutorials you can find through a simple Google search.
The many tutorials are usually on specific programming concepts or tools: a Medium post on how to add Redux to your existing project, a YouTube video on how to use ES6 destructuring, a CSS-Tricks article on the ins and outs of CSS Flexbox — you get the idea.
I used to love these tutorials when I started out: they are hands-on, ultra-specific and, most importantly, I had something built at the end of it, whether it worked or not.
I couldn’t get enough of these, even though most of the time I was left frustrated and confused after following the tutorials! That’s because following these gave me a sense of progress and accomplishment; I felt like I wasn’t wasting time playing video games and whatnot.
I didn’t notice that I had a problem until after 1 full year of following tutorials and realizing that I still couldn't build a simple thing by myself without looking up references.
That's hundreds of tutorials I followed faithfully in the span of 300+ days! Thinking I was going to come out the other side an experience and confident dev...
Some of those tutorials might be out-of-date, some might not work at all when I tried them because of things the author forgot to mention, and some outright skipped details assuming I had already known them. Despite all that, I pushed through.
The result? Zero confidence and a whole lot of knowledge that
I couldn't figure out how to apply!
But here’s the worst part of it all: many of these tutorials and lessons mention nothing about the why behind why I was supposed to learn these things.
Recently, I also learned that these problems I had more than a decade ago have been making their way into coding bootcamps — the courses which you pay thousands and tens of thousands of dollars to attend, the places which are supposed to have more guidance, more curation and overall more thought put into the teachings and materials used.
OK, let me rephrase that just to be fair: there were definitely a lot of thoughts and efforts put into writing tutorials and building bootcamp curricula, there’s no doubt about it.
But, many fail to account for the beginners’ way of thinking and learning. And in the bootcamps case, they are attempting to have beginners absorb an overwhelming amount of information in a very short time frame.
If you think about it, web dev is a rapidly evolving field which you need a wide breadth of knowledge to succeed in; trying to memorize it all and hoping for second-nature recall of all that information just isn’t realistic. That is, if you can even stay sane long enough to have learned some of the advanced topics.
Naturally, the basics are increasingly important as the field rapidly evolves.
Picture this:
A high-rise building is being built at the speed of 2 stories per week (don’t worry, this is not a maths question 😛). If the foundation of the building is only 10 meters deep, the building will not have enough weight and support from the bottom, thus will soon crumble and fall.
You know where I’m going with this, don’t you? If you only focus on taking in new information really fast, you will not have time or energy left to build a solid foundation.
And this foundation we are speaking of—having a good grasp of the basics—it doesn’t just provide us a good base to build our knowledge on, no, far from it. It will also accelerate our learning of new things as they come and solving new problems faster.
Now you might be wondering,
"The basics are just basics. I’ve already gone over them and I know what they are by now. What more is there to do with them? How do I make them more 'solid'?"
Let me explain:
You have indeed gone over the basics, possibly many times by now through following tutorials and lessons of other forms. But there’s one thing that you may have missed that could be the key that frees you from having to find references (using our old friend, Google) whenever you want to build something of your own;
The key to relieving you from the feeling of overwhelm, confusion and lack of confidence in your journey to become a proficient and professional software engineer.
That “key” to having code flow out of your fingertips, with absolute confidence and seemingly little effort;
That “key” that unlocks your great ability to translate ideas and visions into fully functional programs; that “key” to accelerating your growth from a “complete noob” to a “confident professional”.
Do you want to know what the “key” is? If you do, then please like, comment and subscribe. I’ll pick one person at random to share this secret with… after we introduce you to our sponsor, NordBearSquare!
I kid, I kid :D
I do apologize for hyping this up before the reveal. That is because I believe, actually I know, this is one of the most important things you can learn in your programming journey, even though it will be very underwhelming when you hear it.
Because that secret “key” to all that glory is repetition.
Simple as that. If you are following a tutorial, discard your first attempt, start from scratch and follow it again, and again, and again…
Oh, I wasn’t lying about the importance and benefits of repetition, that’s why I’m repeating it again: repetition is the key to your success. It’s your compass to navigating in this rapid-growing and confusing landscape; it’s the magic Genie that gives you that “a-ha” moment you were looking for when trying to understand some new concepts.
This might sound like a boring old cliche, and you might be thinking “duh, of course, if I practiced more I’ll get better.”
But no, that’s not all, not even close.
Repetition, when you do it right, will not only help you get better at coding, it will also, somehow, magically help you understand things you couldn’t understand before, and get you to “click”, to get that precious “a-ha” moment in a relatively short time frame.
If you are wondering what I meant by “doing it right”, I’ve created a little workbook you can download (for free) at the end of this page. It will show you exactly what I did to discover this simple and easy method that took me from confusion to a complete understanding of something in mere days.
Think of what you can do with this new understanding!
- You will be able to acquire new knowledge at the speed of sound.
- You will wish you could type faster because you already know exactly what you’ll code out in your head.
- You will regret spending so much time finding new tutorials and following them when you could’ve learned more and gained more confidence by using this method on old tutorials you’ve already seen.
With this new understanding, you shouldn’t be surprised when it all starts to “click” for you in the weeks or mere days after you started practicing this way. You will discover new abilities such as learning to use a new library (with simple APIs) within 3 days and generating an endless number of cool project ideas to build!
You will gain more confidence and patience, feel less overwhelmed and confused. When all the used-to-be-scary errors scream in your face, you will look at them calmly and with a plan of attack because you’ve seen and tackled it all.
Simply fill out the form below and the workbook will be sent to you automatically! (you didn't think a programmer like me would do this manually, did you 😉? maybe...)
P.S. feel free to email me for other totally-magical-secrets-that-few-people-know that I've learned in my 10+ years working in the industry.
Sincerely,
Sam Zhao
Senior Front End Engineer