Learning code: remembering and applying

[tobeeornot]

Hope this doesn’t sound too pathetic but I’ve just been doing a 30 day Jquery course and although I’m doing well enough on the quizzes, and are reasonably comfortable recognizing what finished code means from the provided examples, I feel that I would have real difficulty writing code myself without assistance. Do people think that is a normal part of the learning curve? If so, does anyone have suggestions what is the best way to move forward, bearing in mind I don’t want to spend all my time repeating exercises. Or is that the best way?

[Senff]

It’s normal. Or, well, I have the same.

I think it’s like driving a car. You can learn the theory, you can take driving lessons, but you really start getting the hang of it once you drive by yourself in the real world.

And I don’t even have a license! ;)

I do write down a lot though. If I figure out a piece of code of which I think I might need it again later, I just save it in a central place so I can look back whenever I need to. That beats the “oooohhh, I used that kind of thing in an earlier project, but I can’t remember anymore which one it was….!!!??“

[Johnnyb]

Yeah I’m the same. I think it’s the same for any language though, the more you use it the more it sticks. I’d been learning jQuery from books for a while and then I started a very jQuery-intensive project at work and through doing that I became a lot more comfortable writing from scratch. I still have to refer to the jQuery API docs frequently though, but by putting it into practice in real situations it really helps to make the information stick.

[dfogge]

from my experience you have to work on real projects in order to memorize anything.

[tobeeornot]

Thanks for the reassurance guys. Making something stick with new stuff is always my issue. I guess it would be best if I gave myself useful project that applies the theories and just go for it and press on.

[TheDoc]

Totally normal. It’ll take some time before you’re writing things from scratch.

I would recommend trying to write it from scratch as much as you can. Then check resources to find out where you went wrong (if you did).

[tobeeornot]

Thanks Doc – I think writing from scratch frequently is the way to go too, even if it can be frustrating!

[Author]

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