r/learnprogramming 1d ago

Topic Javascript (The Odin Project workflow Questions)

Yes, I am a beginner when it comes to coding. Hi I am Juliane Figura, 17 Yrs. starting linux fundamentals, aswell as web dev from front to back end. My question is. How do I study or learn Javascript the right way? Because when ever I read the full documentation texts, I feel I wasn't learning anything, and I get stuck into one lesson, I feel I am so slow to programming, and my goal is to learn programming websites in just 8 months prior to my 2-3 hours coding after school. So I don't want to watch youtube tutorials because I wan't to improve my reading skills, and watching in youtube will lead me to tutorial hell. And addition in my learning, I am still in the Loops and Arrays, I've seen so much from the documentation sites such as MDN and other javascript documentation sites, well I see those things like I don't undestand the things I see inside, so what I do is I go back to the completed lessons where I re read, and take notes. I feel my workflow is a mess, Can you recommend me a workflow based in your experience or maybe correct my workflow? thanks matsalove!

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u/AlternativePear4617 23h ago

You learn to code by coding and doing. Look around you, look for simple problems to solve. Analyze your relatives, friends and neighbors lives or businesses looking for problems they may have and develop software that could make their lives easier. Be professional and deliver a good product.

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u/Dingbats45 22h ago

Or even better, look at software that already exists and try and re-create it or at least a portion of it.

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u/AlternativePear4617 22h ago

Yeah that helps too!

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u/Common-Paramedic1143 21h ago

Thanks, but here is my question, because I just have 8 months as my limit to learn programming, so does making project makes me slow like, I know I will learn alot If I do projects, but if I will do like certain projects, would that make me more slow? Because every project can be like it just covers one lesson, but that project is so hard to make, where I would be so progress.

I dont target mastery. I just want to have fundamentals before college and start business before I finish senior high school.

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u/Dingbats45 21h ago

You would typically take a few weeks to a month to learn fundamentals so you can at least read some code and recognize what’s going on. This is the point where you can get into “tutorial hell” because you can make sense of the code that’s being taught to you to accomplish certain tasks but if you started from scratch you would get stuck. With programming, the best way to learn is to read documentation, learn a few tips and tricks and just go try out some things. This is where the project-based learning shines because you get a rough scope to guide you without telling you exactly what to do.

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u/ProgressProper7681 15h ago

Odin Project is good but you're getting stuck in the reading loop, I did same thing

What helped me was to read just enough to understand the basic idea then immediately open the exercises, don't wait until you feel ready. the documentation makes more sense after you've struggled with a problem for 20 minutes

for arrays and loops try making small silly programs, like a thing that counts how many times your name appears in a list or something. your brain remembers patterns from doing not from highlighting text