Yes it feels like that sometimes. I have studied human languages (2, English and French) and I can see how coding is very similar to languages. Lexicon might no be it all but if you do not have most of it or sufficient of it you cannot solve some of the problems. I have found that the more programming lexicon I get the more problems I can solve, the more creative I can be.
By the way talking about Barbara Oakley, I took one of her courses and I liked the concept of interleaving and how the mind gains by effort but also how is good to step from a problem when you are stuck and let it sink, your brain will keep working at it. So I do this, I interleave using not just leisure activities but other learning activities, topics and programming languages, concepts or paradigms. I also step from a problem when I get really stuck and work on something else or just take a break, or look at some other code solutions by others.
As far as the coding it has been quite easy to learn by FCC alone, my issues have been mostly learning how codepen works and how to make it work on android which is where I have been doing alot of my learning. This codepen/FCC interaction is strange. It has made me go away from FCC and search other sites for answers. This is bad for FCC I think, because it reduces much of the engagement within the community but good for us as future professionals since it teaches(forces us to learn) about other sources of information much like research. This has opened up alot of confusion because of learning many different ways of solving the same problem when not all ways are best practices.
I just looked at the code on one of the projects and itās true they have other things that havenāt been taught in the examples. I wonder why use those examples. I think itās a fair rule only if you taught it but if you havenāt then Iām not sure I agree. Anyways many people teaching coding actually say something different they teach to look at otherās code and learn from it. I know some people donāt want you to look and to do it yourself. I think asking does help a lot. I like experts exchange they have great help there better than stackflow.
Anyways, freecodecamp is cool but I can see why people with zero experience would get stuck. Iām stuck right now because I wasnāt prepared for projects. Even though I got to it pretty fast and it was easy until I hit one project. I could ask and probably get help. Iāll try it and see what happens.
Same here. I have learned (and still learning) much of programming I know mostly by reading and understanding code written by others. And I think it is not only ānot wrongā but in fact necessary for rookie coders to learn by imitating (not copying) experienced programmers. There is absolutely nothing wrong in looking at a nicely written piece of code, cracking it down to the last symbol and reconstructing your own solution taking that previous code as a blueprint!