The problem with learning programming

Everyone has a different personality, the instructors can not create the curriculum to conform to each person individually. That’s why they don’t just stop teaching once they are finished with the curriculum, they are still here to keep teaching because they know some personalities will struggle with the lessons.

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Did I put that correctly?

In my point of view FCC is free e-learning for entry level. Also because it’s free, don’t expect too much. There is one year Full Stack Dev certification for the value of $15k and more. Sure there you will find more than what you need because you paid for it.

I admit that the most powerful Dev learning system is daily projects because it is with projects that you will have solid basis. But as I said, we could not blame someone who is offering us such huge amount of learning for free, in fact we should thank him very much and be grateful to. Not everyone could offer him/her self $15k certification.

At least he is offering us a new opportunity, new doors to open. Personally I am grateful to FCC. Thank you very much. Once I realized what I have in my mind, I will be great financial FCC supporter to make it 100 times better while keeps it for free to keep offering lots of persons a new opportunity to have a better life!

PS: My point of view(you are not forced to believe it): JavaScript really sucks, I started thinking to specialize my self in back-end dev with Python-Django and Ruby-on-rails. I really hate JS so f***** much for its ugly syntax, hard array manipulating. If you take a look on Python and Ruby, I am sure you will understand what I am talking about.

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Yeah, you must recall, firdavsiQ, that a lot of these teachers are doing this for free! hey, that’s great! They are busy and they are doing their best for you without forcing you to do anything for them but respect their rights.

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You can’t expect everything.

58 posts were merged into an existing topic: Just a conversational thread about JavaScript

I think saying your opinion about someone’s teaching is okay. I know they teach for free and ı appreciate that. But hopefully they take this post to improve their future way of teaching something.

I believe they welcome suggestions for making freecodecamp better and better. :slightly_smiling_face: I am actually glad you agree that that stuff could be explained perhaps in a different way that is more clear to us beginners.

Because, I need a little help too.

You’re absolutely right. And because of you guys, I am strong enough to keep going. :+1: Thanks for helping everyone. :grin:

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Yup, this is why I love the FCC community, because there are a lot of people that is willing to help others that is really in need. Also the fact that they will receive feedbacks is just the best thing about forums like this.

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If you want to contribute to freecodecamp, to help improve it, it is an open source project: it came together from the effort of hundreds of people, and it keeps improving thanks to hundreds of people, you can be one of us.

you can read everything about contributing to Free Code Camp in the contributing docs.

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Leaning programming is not a difficult task. To learn any programming language means to implement the data structure and use of particular language format. Keep practice it again and again until you get success.

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My thoughts exactly. I agree with you @SarbjitGrewal. I must acknowledge that most programmers are good at what they do i.e. coding but they are very clueless about how learning takes place. Unfortunately there are tons of tutorials labelled as beginner friendly but when you look at the content, language used and how they are structured, most learners will have a negative learning experience and that includes FCC to some extent.

Programming is not harder or easier than any other discipline out there but what makes it hard are the so many clueless instructors ( but very good programmers) producing ‘lousy’ tutorials. This helps perpetuate the notion that ‘programming is hard’ yet it is not. You can be good at it with time and effort if you follow the right course. I honestly think before a tutorial is released on a platform such as this, it is thoroughly reviewed otherwise instead of helping people learn, you will find you are doing the complete opposite i.e frustrating the learning process.

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@nibble
i agree a little, (not trying to hijack @SarbjitGrewal @firdavsiQ ),
some of the excercises i see in “great” JavaScript books (which im currently learning) completely throw me, until i realise they have added some fancy syntax to their example code that isnt necessary to learn the principle being explained. A teacher needs to lose their ego at the door as best they can, and not use the teaching as an ego booster to show “how much they know” or “look how cool this feature is” or "this example is similar to xxx in ____ (enter another language here!!). I also don’t understand the need to show a beginner “look how great you can simplify this code”, when a beginner (i.e. ME) barely knows how to code at all in the first place! Improvement in coding should come AFTER you know the basics. Nobody runs before being fairly competent at walking!

Ive lost a ton of time going backwards in my learning because someone experienced adds in a word to their code that i think is a keyword (that i suddenly dont know and isnt necessary to explain the concept), or some new syntax that i think is important to a concept (that i think im stupid for missing)… only to find out that the fancy parts of the example code arent actually required to learn the principle being explained.

Also a lot of coding, for me, would be good to have practical examples of the principle being explained in REAL WORLD CODE to solve a REAL WORLD PROBLEMS, otherwise i feel like im just learning the “order of the planets” or “random dates in history” as a pointless exercise in future code aesthetics. I like to see how code translates into results. There is little to no practical value in code that does nothing useful.

I noticed last night, while perusing Kyle Simpsons well regarded YDKJS books, that the first book in the series on github says; “Keep in mind that even though this book is titled “Get Started,” it’s not intended as a beginner/intro book” - im supposed to have three months coding experience to “get started” :exploding_head:

FCC does a great job for free, but im a big believer in Kaizen. Im currently struggling to get recursion and other concepts in ES6, while not knowing enough practical JS code to build… anything! Surely thats the wrong way round? Ive been looking for basic “decomposition” excercises online (which i havent found) and ive got three personal web projects to build (i dont have enough knowledge to get the JS on any of them to work).

if you have suggestions of things to change, you can open an issue on github to discuss it, challenges are ever-changing
freecodecamp is proud to be beginner friendly and if you think there is anything that could be done better, Free Code Camp listen, and contributors make changes

I don’t agree that “learning programming is not a difficult task”. Different parts of programming are difficult to different people, and leaning to be a true expert is quite difficult.

The fact that different people encounter difficulties in different parts of learning is why I generally try to avoid language that minimizes the difficulties others are having. By saying things like “you simply…” or “you just…”. Different people have challenges while learning something new, and that’s ok.

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It’s entirely possible that this is the person is trying to show off and has an ego problem. It’s also possible that they are trying to build you up to broader understanding and best practices.

A lot of pedagogical theory support teaching by

  1. reminding people of something they already know
  2. building something new off of the current knowledge
  3. mentioning future learning towards the final end learning goals

With coding, there is the minimum code required to get the example to run and there are modifications and extensions that push the code closer to best practices for real world examples.

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This topic temporarily took a turn into discussing the value and history of JavaScript. Those replies have been moved into their own topic.

I don’t think they’d accept any suggestions from people who come from third world countries. Do you think they do?

Free Code Camp has a wide variety of volunteer developers from across the world.