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General Discussion

Matthew Lawson
Matthew Lawson
2,249 Points
Posted by Matthew Lawson
Matthew Lawson
2,249 Points

How do you go about making sure you remember what you've learnt?

So when I follow through with the lesson I feel like I've got a really good handle on the code, I understand what's being said and how to use that in the examples. But sometimes I just feel like when I come to use that at a later point I can't remember what I've been taught.

Any tips?

2 Answers

Jacob Herrington
Jacob Herrington
15,835 Points
Jacob Herrington
Jacob Herrington
15,835 Points

A lot of programming is exposing yourself to the concepts then remembering how to figure out the solution when you find a problem. It's not so much memorizing or remembering every little rule you come across (unless you want to be an expert in one specific language or paradigm), as it is learning how to learn and find solutions.

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points
Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

Try reading the Documentation. It always helps me :)

  1. This is very common with programming in any language. It happens all the time, even to the best programmer ever in the whole world. And it's fine! That's why there's a documentation. Documentations are for reviewing functions, modules, etc.

Also:

  1. If you don't write code, you actually won't learn anything. You may say to yourself "oh yeah I understand that", but later, like 1 hour to 2 days, you will forget that. However, if you actually write code, you will remember that for a lifetime (unless you don't want to remember it).

If you don't ever write code but watched 1000 Treehouse videos about 3 times each, you still won't accomplish anything. The next you write code, you will be lost until you re-watch the videos and actually following along.

It's just like with me; I tried learning C# before on Treehouse, and I tried to remember everything, but boy, I was wrong. I should of written code. Now, I forgot everything (almost) about C#.

I hope you understand :)

I hope this helps! ~Alex

EDITED

Matthew Lawson
Matthew Lawson
2,249 Points
Matthew Lawson
Matthew Lawson
2,249 Points

That sure does help, Alex, thank you so much for that. I think it's just frustrating me a little because I know I really want a job in Web Design / Dev but finding the time to work on live projects alongside my current job is proving to be difficult.

But I'm certainly going to take your advice on board and make more of an effort to get into writing code in whatever spare time I have! :)

Jacob Herrington
Jacob Herrington
15,835 Points
Jacob Herrington
Jacob Herrington
15,835 Points

Matthew Lawson -- Check out CodePen if you haven't already. If you are interested in the Front-End/Design space this is a great place to not only save your work, but showcase it later. I use it every day.

Matthew Lawson
Matthew Lawson
2,249 Points
Matthew Lawson
Matthew Lawson
2,249 Points

Jacob Herrington -- I do have a CodePen account but it's something that I've never really used. I really need to dedicate more of my time into Treehouse and spend more time focusing on this. I really do want to make a career swap into Web Design / Dev.

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

No problem :)

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

Exactly (to your writing code often)! :smile:

That's the spirit of learning programming. It is to want to program :smile:

To become a descent programmer in 2 years, you must learn and code every day. Even when you are a professional, there's a lot to learn! I started learning programming 3 years ago and started mildly then went really into it last year. I still would say I only scratched the surface of programming, though. Programming goes extremely deep from making robots, websites, text-based games to learning how to code in binary and make TVs from scratch. There's actually never a time where you actually become a good programmer. you just learn more and more but you never reach a point that your "good" until you can do pretty much anything on your own without any help (don't worry; this happens very rarely. Don't try to memorize everything you learn). With other (common) people like you and me, you have to keep looking up the documentation or something to remember syntax, tags, methods, etc. You don't have to memorize anything you learn, just keep researching if you forget. That is important. Some people try to memorize everything they learn, and it turns out that they are very forgetful about many things and can't really do programming without help.

Steps to become a "good" programmer:

  • Keep programming (duh)
  • Don't try to memorize things, it can always be found by looking it up.
  • Be calm and happy. If you are impatient (for example, skipping important courses, videos, etc.), you barley learn.
  • Learn as much as you can put into it :smile:

I hope you will learn from this :)

Good luck! ~alex