Finding new ways to learn

There are so many resources for learning web development, some better than others, and I've often found myself spinning my wheels needlessly learning in the incorrect way. I've gone down rabbit holes that have cost me weeks of time; unfortunately, sometimes there are too many options. I've taken entire courses that were over 20 hours long that gained me very little, while taking 4 hour courses that moved me forward in leaps and bounds. Will Sentance's courses have been invaluable to me. They have increased my confidence in my JavaScript knowledge and have taught me so much in as succinct a way as possible. As I reach the end of "JavaScript: The Hard Parts of Object-Oriented JavaScript," I find myself wishing there were more of his courses to take. After this, I only have one left to take on NodeJS, which will surely be interesting. After this course, I plan on taking a few courses by Bianca Gandolfo on JavaScript algorithms. Behind Sentance, she has been my favorite instructor on Frontend Masters, teaching in a very similar way to Sentance, using the Socratic Method.

More than half the battle of this whole journey has been learning how to learn. For me, reading manuals, books, or documentation, at least at this point in my career, are much less impactful, than watching captivating videos like Sentance's courses. Before I got on Frontend Masters, I took several really important courses on Udemy that focused more on following along with coding tutorials. These were fantastic for my style of learning; I was able to create some great projects while watching someone else guide me along the way. At this point in my journey, I feel the need to practice without much guidance. I tried CodeWars, a site focused on pretty difficult problem sets that you are left to do on your own, but I felt like this was a bit too advanced for me. I ended up spending a lot of time on Stack Overflow, and the problems that I did solve were mostly copied and pasted from Stack Overflow. After doing a little digging last night, I came across a site called Edabit. Edabit gives you thousands of JavaScript exercises, starting at a really basic level and slowly working you up from there. I went through about 30 problems last night before I was tapped out, most of them incredibly easy, but great confidence boosters and also really good review of the basic concepts of JavaScript. I think this could be incredibly valuable for me, and would match up perfectly with where I'm at in my learning journey right now.

After a long day of work, with 13 hours of running outside in one of the most humid days I've experienced all Summer, I'm left with very little energy. Tonight, I've decided that, instead of tackling some more problems on Edabit, I would focus on finishing Will Sentance's course that I started yesterday on object-oriented programming. I've taken some other courses on this topic, one of which taught by him, so for the most part I understand these concepts fairly well and it serves as a review to strengthen my base of knowledge on the topic. However, Will has a great skill of taking a simple concept and revealing how complicated it really is, but in a way that is understandable. There are so many things in JavaScript that are hidden under the hood, but are so integral to having a complete grasp of the topics. Like I said, I'm not looking forward to finishing this course and only having one more course of his to take. I may have to go through his courses a couple more times, just so I can relive the great experience.

Until tomorrow!