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I took quarantine as an opportunity to brush up my front-end coding skills and happy with my progress so far. Here I want to share my thoughts, tips and study notes with those who& #39;re interested in teach themselves coding (thread):
1. Setup a good roadmap. I find this video very helpful, and I& #39;m following the exact steps mentioned: https://youtu.be/sppSnBQVt0k ">https://youtu.be/sppSnBQVt...
2. Pick a medium that works best for you. I personally don& #39;t like watching videos and prefer doing small challenges instead. So I picked @freeCodeCamp as my starting point. If you prefer videos then something like @treehouse might work better for you.
Here& #39;s my progress on @freeCodeCamp https://www.freecodecamp.org/torizhao ">https://www.freecodecamp.org/torizhao&... Took me about 2 weeks to go through the responsive web design course. I leave out the final project to finish later after I& #39;m more comfortable with CSS.
3. Practice with doing code snippets. Whatever medium you choose, you& #39;ll *never* really learn with only following tutorials. Check https://www.w3schools.com/howto/ ">https://www.w3schools.com/howto/&qu... for lists of stuff you can work on.
I personally chose to work on real world examples although they& #39;re harder than W3S ones. I learned a ton during this process. So far I& #39;ve made 3 snippets from my favorite websites. My goal is to make at least 12.
As an example, here& #39;s the @reddit leader-board code snippet I made a few days ago https://codepen.io/tori_zhao/pen/MWaXrze">https://codepen.io/tori_zhao...
4. Make sure you& #39;re comfortable with current level before moving on. Don& #39;t learn bootstrap until you understand CSS. Don& #39;t learn React until you understand pure Javascript. Take baby-steps, make sure your skills are solid.
5. Pick good tools. I use @VisualStudio as my code editor and @FirefoxDevTools as my browser for learning (it& #39;s MUCH better than Chrome, trust me! ) Remember “Good tools are prerequisite the successful execution of a
job” （工欲善其事，必先利其器）
job” （工欲善其事，必先利其器）
6. Do it consistently. I tell myself to write "just 1 line of code per day". This helped me tremendously on building learning habits. Don& #39;t burn yourself out, just do it slowly and consistently instead.
7. This is just a start of my self-teaching coding journey. I& #39;m in no rush. I& #39;m not doing it for changing jobs, getting a raise or anything like that. I just do it for fun, and to make myself feel accomplished during this special time.
9. I don& #39;t set "final goals" of what I& #39;m hoping to accomplish "at the end" because that gives so much pressure. All I& #39;m focusing on is NOW: Do I enjoy working on this specific code snippet *right now*? As long as I have a yes answer, I& #39;m in good spot.
I find this "focusing on now" mentality very important for me to keep the momentum going on, so I& #39;d love to share with all of you. If you feel like constantly giving up and don& #39;t know how to build a learning habit, try this! And let me know what you think.
10. I& #39;m sharing all my learning notes and progress tracking on this Notion page: https://www.notion.so/toriz/Coding-Study-Notes-b8d71c6628c442bab2e108d53a5b9125">https://www.notion.so/toriz/Cod... Feel free to reach out if you got any question regarding self-teaching code. Happy coding!
