Month: September 2018

 

How I thought learning to code would be

1. I want to learn coding
2. First I must learn one thing
3. After learning one thing I learn the next thing
4. Once I learn all the things I am finished.
5. I have about 100 things to learn

Reality

1. I learn the first thing in my “learn to code” plan
2. After learning the first thing, I learn I must learn three extra things.
3. I learn the first thing of the extra three things
4. After learning the first of the three extra things I learn there are three extra things I must learn
5. I start to learn the first extra thing that I learned I must learn after learning the first extra thing of the group of three things I learned after I learned the first thing I planned on learning.
6. After learning the first extra thing that I learned I must learn after learning the first extra thing of the group of three things I learned after I learned the first extra thing of the group of three things I learned after I learned the first thing I planned…… I learn there are three extra things I must learn.

This is the reality of learning to code.
Once you make that realisation and can hold it in your head as an independent concept, rather than thinking, “I just need to learn a few bits and bobs, gimme a few days”, then I think you have learned the first lesson.

I’m 9 Months in on spending 3-4 hours a day on average in learning to code apps.

I’ve gone from:

CSS/HTML (update)
Javascript
Bootcamp
Materilize
Vue
Firebase (+nosql dbase)
VueCLI
Vuetify
and currently, Vuex (serious brain ache)
and next is Nuxt and then I am done.

I’m now building SPA’s (single page apps) in the cloud with a decent CRUD back end with which I can use as templates to build various apps. Of course nothing ever gets finished as I grab the next learning fix.
Also there are a quite a few other concepts I want to fully grasp, but I am on track to launch my first public app before the year is up.
That is if I can resist learning AWS, D3.js, Laravel, Mongodb….etc.

This is the journey I am on and I am not getting off till it is done.

Photo by Tory Morrison on Unsplash

The brain does not play fairly when you learn coding. The brain should say, “well done, you have just learned how to use the Vue CLI effectively and you even know what CLI means.”

No, the brain does not say this, it says “Gimme more. Sure we can install stuff into our SPA using the CLI and NPM. But it’s now essential we learn Vuex, Nuxt, Vuetify and axios. This is the only way we can think of ourselves as successful.

It’s weird, because I set out on this path so I could deploy apps, slap tasty widgets on my web pages that the hordes will find too tasty to resist. But that goal seems to have been buried in the weeds off the New Jersey Turnpike. And holding the shovel is my brain.

I think what happens is that the buzz I get from learning – and you do get a buzz – gives you such a hit of dopamine that you get addicted to it and the only way you can get your next hit is to learn the next thing.

If I can learn how to deploy a RESTful API using Axios I can get another hit. I am addicted to the learning process because of the drug my brain delivers when I have success.

I assume most have this addiction. It may be that those who are expert in the field and actually build stuff know far more than they needed to, but managed to get off the learning treadmill.

Udemy, Udacity, Freecodecamp are all dealers of this stuff. Although as a user I would say that they deliver fantastic product.

When we say we love learning, we are really saying we love that hit.

I do want to build, there are things in my head that need to be removed and placed in a server somewhere. It’s getting way too crowded and very noisy in my head these days.

For me, learning to code is my drug, it is my addiction. But I am aware and I am introducing things into my routine to reduce the cravings, one of them is writing this blog post.

After 9 months of focused learning I am currently learning/struggling with:

• Firebase functions
• RESTful api via Axios
• Firebase storage
• Vue 2

After that I am looking at Nuxt, as I want the SPA to have a decent SEO score and then it will be on to Phonegap to be able to send my app mobile.

Optional learnings are Vuetify (do I need this if I know Materialize and Bootstrap) and NodeJS (I already know a bit of PHP so should I stick with this)

It seems you can only know what you need to learn after you have learned it. It’s tricky for others to give you advice as everyone not only has a different menu but are sitting in a different restaurant with their own set of digestive intolerances.

I had dreamed it was going to be as simple, as “learn stuff, do stuff”. But it’s way more complex than that.

Which is why I love it.