What a ride!
I remember on my first day I read a very helpful article that gave me the forewarning of the learners journey and the changes in confidence one experiences on their way to competency (described in the image below).
Before I began designing my own web page, I read this with the breath of gratitude and even a little skepticism that I wouldn’t likely struggle much, after all, my reading comprehension is pretty decent (insert nervous and inappropriate laughter here).
Boy, was I underestimating my ability to struggle! At first I started out with a mess, which I have to admit is very typical of how I generally begin things.
I learned a lot along the way, but ultimately decided to begin fresh and give myself a better chance to learn the course work.
For those of you teaching yourselves code the article describes the curve as beginning with the hand holding honeymoon where you're learning your tools and a basic foundation of knowledge. After this is the second phase, where you move slowly but quite obviously to the cliff of confusion, where you begin to realize things are much more difficult outside of the hand holding honeymoon. Then comes the Desert of Despair that takes you down path after path of working solutions and you are thirsty for solid resources which can lead you down useless rabbit holes. After this is the final and fourth phase, the Upswing of Awesome. The path out of the desert to the relief of a deeper understanding of application development, even if the code is brittle and easily broken.
I am currently still in the hand holding honeymoon phase, but I am very happy I made the choice to start over with my code. I feel I have a much better understanding and more confidence in my ability to move forward on this Adventure in Learning.
I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that
I may learn how to do it. -Picasso
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