A few months ago I wrote this post and from this day until 01-FEV I have worked in a personal project, you can see what I build below.
Vimeo:
If this project was perfect? Without bugs? Absolutely not but, hey it's my first project ok?
When I finished the project above I started thinking about what I can do to get better and to learn more, so I start working with more frameworks, using APIS, build an entire CRUD application and I did well so far.
My Plan
* Month 1 - Learn everything I can (syntax etc)
* Month 2 - Start building my own project
* Month 3 - Month 5 - Finish my first project
Wow! So you spend almost 5 months doing the project above? Yes! Why? Because every time I get stuck I read the whole documentation about the technology I'm using.
Month 1
FreeCodeCamp, Documentation, Udemy, Scrimba, PluralSight. I spent the whole month learning how JavaScript syntax is, how to use vanilla JS, how to use handlebars, how to use MongoDB, how to use express, how I can make a register/login and validation. It's a hard month if you are asking, it's overwhelming!!
Month 2
I've decided that I wanted to build the project above so I started building the project, making some sketch (design, database Schemas, etc..), get stuck, build at least 1 new function per day (I failed this point), and so on.
Month 3 / Month 5
During this month I faced many difficulties because I didn’t know how to work properly in getting info from my MongoDB, how handlebars works etc.
What I learned after this 'mess'?
Well, If I haven’t started a project, if I didn’t get stuck, If I didn’t have doubts, I wouldn’t have placed myself in front of a whiteboard thinking about what I should’ve done to make things work.
So What? What's my plan for everyone escapes from Tutorial Purgatory?
If I've started again, I've followed the same plan. Why?
Because I get my hands' dirt from the beginning, I put myself in awkward situations, I get stuck over and over, I've spent days looking into documentation, I've done my own work and smashed my keyboard looking for solutions, looking for results.
The ideal plan (for me worked fine)
Spend the first month or two looking for documentation, looking for tutorials, looking for courses, take some notes, write what you learn, don't try to get everything only on your mind because it doesn't work well. Learn the basics about the language you choose, understand basic structures, learn debbuging, algorithm.
When you deal well with the points above, just jump into some basic project, forget about tic tac toes, to-dos and so on, it only makes you burning precious time and weeks and if you are into programming to get a job, my friend, companies don't care about your To-Do or your Tic Tac Toes. Why?? Because everyone does the same and if you want the company to look into your profile, you should be different, make things different!
I hope my path gives you some ideas and you can escape from tutorial purgatory since it's complicated to jump from tutorials and start working in your own project, but it's the best way!
I've started using my Instagram account to share my work, what I'm working on, my projects, and some snippets (how to make an express server, how to connect your server with MongoDB...) and it really helps me because sometimes I need to learn enough to explain to others.
Feel free to follow, drop some comments :))
Instagram
Top comments (1)
It's also good to do to-do apps and tic tac toes to learn but not to show to potential employers, I agree.
But it also doesn't need to be something super unique. Trying to build something that no one has ever done before might get you stuck even in the concept false, so go ahead and begin with tic tac toes if you want :)