I am presently in the intermediate Algorithms -
The mistake I made going through the challenges was that my objective was to complete the challenges… This seems like an obvious goal at first… What I realized the harder the challenges became was that I never learned the core concepts of the previous challenges…
We live in a time where we feel rushed to get it right the first time or as soon as possible…
We are taught that “Two wrongs, don’t make a right” … What I have learned in programming is that with 100 wrongs you may eventually get it right or you may not - You will definitely have learned something…
Each time you get it wrong- GOOD… That means you are trying!!!
Having said that on to the next challenge…
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Agreed.
When I first started, I got through challenges really quickly and took a lot of pride in that. Then things got more difficult and I almost gave up.
The thing is, I have always steered away from anything that was difficult for me. I was always good at school, and to me if things were easy, it meant that I was smart.
The most important thing I learned while learning to code is that when it’s hard, it means you are learning. If it’s easy, you’re not learning anything! Or like I always tell my daughter, ‘if you do something difficult, it makes your brain grow’
For those who are worried about getting through the curriculum fast, time spent learning the concepts will really cut down on the time you will spend on the projects. Taking your time through the tutorials is a good time investment!
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I’d agree with both of these sentiments. I started six months ago as an experienced JS/JQ programmer wanting to get better structure into my code, so ran through the first 300 !! steps pretty quickly. I then got bogged down in the ‘Advanced Algorithms’ section and stalled for six months. I’ve started again, and tackled a couple of these successfully by reviewing some of the previous lessons as there is a very good progression between lessons.
Some of the time you will get stuck. Searching for the answer is not good if you don’t understand what you’re searching for and what the answer means. Searching for clues and generic instructions for how to do something is not just good, but essential IMHO. You will always find other people tackling the same problem in ways you hadn’t considered.
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