HOW I LEARNT REACT AND NODE JS IN SIX WEEKS
I’m sure you’re thinking if this is possible, let’s see if I can convince you. First of all, I detest programming, yes, I said it. The number of hours sitting or kneeling to write lines and lines of code doesn’t appeal to me. I did try my best to like it because we were taught at least one programming language a year at school but it just wasn’t clicking for me. This was literally me whenever I get an A in coding courses.
Shoutout to tech bros and sis’ that are into coding, y’all are the real MVPs to be honest. So, imagine me working on a final year project where I have to code??? I was petrified to say the least. For my chapters 1 & 2, I was basically chilling because I mean it’s just literature right? Then we came back from our rather short break if you ask me, and I realize that almost everyone had started working on the chapters 3 -5 of their project which entails coding. Imagine the sly. I went into a panic attack. What do I do? Is it too late to change my topic? Now since most of the programming languages that were taught at school were outdated *rolls eyes*, I had to start learning a new one.
Bear in mind that I had no intention of outsourcing my project so I just went full head-on into it. I started gathering resources, asking questions and watching videos on YouTube. ‘Pause’. Unrelated but YouTube is the GOAT, there is literally nothing you won’t find on YouTube when searching. YouTube is a very underrated educational tool in my opinion. ‘Unpause’. So I start, what do I want my landing page to look like? how do I design and implement the functions? I remember working on various components and the day I finally put all the components (functions) together on the landing page, I wanted to cry tears of happiness. I remember spending about over 8hrs putting the landing page together. Yes I know you do it in an hour or two, I did not ask you.
Then it was time for backend, I won’t spend much time discussing it so I won’t get angry. I absolutely HATED it. I had errors upon error and I couldn’t get a lot of resources as I was able to get with react. After weeks of stressing, crying and overeating I was done. What did I learn?? You can’t learn a whole programming language especially full stack in six weeks. Yes I was done with my project but there was a whole world of things out there that I didn’t know that fortunately for me I wouldn’t be going into as that isn’t my career path. My advice to you is that you take your time, know that learning is an ongoing process, calm down and put both time and effort into your craft.
These are some tips I have gathered to help you while you learn
1. Don’t just jump headfirst, learn terminologies and concepts.
2. Work on small projects for fun e.g. landing pages, simple web applications.
3. Connect with a community.
4. Have a mentor.
5. Be consistent.
6. Post your work.
7. Never stop learning, times are changing so methods of doing things will change also.
I hope you love this. Thank you for taking time to read.
