You will see a lot of articles like “Hey all, I was a school teacher before, and now I’m earning $100k as a engineer for x startup”. If you’re starting out in web development and you surround yourself with other people who want to achieve things — they will, you know, achieve. And so will you!
There’s a bit of expectation vs. reality here. If you are the kind of person that can memorize a ton of information relating to your chosen field, then you’re onto a winner. As for myself, it’s about repetition and repetition, until it becomes a habit. And there’s a lot to be said about habits.
Forming habits takes time though. On December 30, 2016, I decided to take part in the #100DaysOfCode challenge. I couldn’t give you an idea of how I felt then, but reviewing the log entries I seemed pretty confused and a little frustrated with it all.
At the end of it, it’s definitely been an enriching and life changing experience for me. Along the way I have met some truly awesome and inspiring people, happy to help with any issues or problems you may have. The support I found not just in the #100DaysOfCode community but the web dev community as a whole is truly amazing.
I’m going to go over some steps I have taken to help me with learning to code (again) and cracking #100DaysOfCode.
Having Patience
Being patient is essential — instant gratification doesn’t work all the time. This will soon come to light if you start to compare yourself to how other people (your cohorts) are progressing. You may start to wonder why you’re not progressing as fast as other people appear to be. This might probably add to any anxiety you may have, whether you can do something or not. Do not concern yourself with this and instead use that energy to focus on what you need to do, and code.
Different people progress at different rates and learn in different ways
As for myself, I have found that I’m a visual learner. I’ve known this for a long time actually, where to be able to ‘join up’ concepts and paradigms that I need to see in action. This is why I will always gush about courses by Kent C. Dodds or Wes Bos, as they are great at explaining complex subjects, among many others. Their content on egghead.io and wesbos.com are awesome at explaining concepts simply and visually.
