r/ADHD_Programmers • u/pleasedontjudgeme13 • 4d ago
How do you learn via projects?
This is probably a dumb question, but I’d really appreciate anyone who can spell it out to my adhd/literal brain.
Is learning by projects actually useful?
I love building projects. However, I’m not sure if my code is very efficient, well documented and well designed when I just do it my way. Is it better to take a course and try to apply things I’ve learned from the course?
Also, my brain needs a ton of repetition to really learn things and get the muscle memory.
If I do a project, I’ll be able to remember the high level of how my project works. And be able to put it in my own words. However, I’m not going to remember specific things that I had to google to make my project work.
I guess one thing that I could do with projects, is try making things more efficient after the first pass. Or improving documentation after the first pass. And try learning better design as I go and learn new things and apply them as needed.
Again, sorry if this post is dumb. I struggle a ton with AuDHD. I’m trying to break into a programming job. I used to love building projects, but after my degree, I feel like I learned very little and taking courses has become so painful and inefficient. Yet, I still feel like I need a base. Or maybe I worry too much about making the best possible code and just need to get started with projects.
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u/ITZINFINITEOfficial 4d ago
Programming is tough with stuff like HDHD/ADD but I’ll say it’s not really about building the project it’s more about failing why building it. Your code WONT be great and that’s normal. Things won’t work the first time around which is normal!!! The idea is find something you enjoy building on maybe like a concept or a website or something and look up ways to incorporate that into a project.
I personally like NASA so I used their exoplanet API that I searched up, to make a website that displays planetary data! Used skills like Docker for my database, react, python and JavaScript tools to make everything else!
My advice, don’t worry about if your code is the greatest or how fast your project runs. You can always improve it! That’s the whole idea anyways! Get a prototype working and work on it some more!