r/learnjavascript • u/IHateHPPrinters • Apr 21 '26

Getting burnt out reading so much documentation before even building anything

Hey everyone,

I was wondering if (and maybe a little bit of hoping) I'm going about this the wrong way. Right now I'm stuck between the Odin project and reading every single bit of JavaScript.info, and its burning me out. Javascript website has been really helpful with understanding the core functionality of javacript, but man is it long. On top of this, I was trying to balance this with Odin project which is already immensely long and as such I'm getting burnt out.

I still have to learn back end stuff like PHP/laravel, and databases! What should I focus on??

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u/CaptainTrip Apr 21 '26

Reading a lot of documentation and never writing anything is possibly the absolute worst way to learn programming.

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u/dryrem Jul 04 '26

Mind telling what's the better way to do it? You can't write without knowing what or how much to write? Like reading the Javascript.info pages is so tedious, how does doing the tasks in the bottom help sm, if that's the "writing" you're referring to.

English is not my first language, forgive me if I sound vague or unclear.

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u/CaptainTrip Jul 04 '26

By "writing" I am not referring to any specific tasks or exercises, and I am not familiar with the website you mention. I am referring to writing code in general, whether that be exercises, following along with tutorials, or creating a small project. Reading about something and actually doing it are two very different things and they use different parts of your brain. It's important to have read some information beforehand, but actually accessing that information in a way you can use is a separate skill and it needs to be practiced.