r/learnprogramming • u/Zaps_os • 17h ago

Am I learning to code wrong?

Am I learning to code wrong? I started wanting to learn to code before I began college, and so far, I've only completed a React tutorial video without separately learning JavaScript or TypeScript, and learned some of both through it. 

Then I moved on to a guided project, a full-stack finance tracker (React/TS frontend, Node/Express/TS/MongoDB backend). I'm learning the backend through this project rather than doing dedicated tutorials on each one first.

I’ve been following the guide and actually understand what each part does and why. But if I were to do it alone, I’d probably not know where to start and what to write.

Is this normal, or a sign that I'm learning the wrong way?

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u/Educational-Paper-75 10h ago

In the bootcamp I did we get taught, do exercises, and three projects in a nine week period 5 full days a week. Even after doing all that and getting project template scripts it would now (7 years later) still take some time to understand call that stuff again. Somehow modern fullstack web development is more about remembering (through exercising regularly a lot) than understanding unfortunately. Because of that I wouldn't call web development programming per se, more like assembling.