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General Discussion

Joshua Wolfe
Joshua Wolfe
1,897 Points
Posted by Joshua Wolfe
Joshua Wolfe
1,897 Points

Newbee looking up code. Is that bad?

Sometimes I feel like I am throwing paint at a wall. I know the basics, but there is so much, I feel handy-capped? (sp?) So I look up the code, try to understand what was written and why wrote and type for myself, not copy paste. Im hoping by doing that a lot. I'll remember stuff. Is that a bad practice?

Moderator Edit: Changed topic of post to General Discussion as it doesn't pertain to a specific language, course, or content.

2 Answers

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

It is definitely not a bad practice—indeed, it is a great practice! The best way to learn programming is to read a lot of code, understand it, type it out, and play around with it. Keep it up! :+1:

When you are first programming, it is hard to write code on your own. Thus you end up mostly reading code, trying to understand it, and writing it out, then playing around and see what changes it does. Doing this actually helps you write code on your own. You must learn how to walk before learning how to run!

Joshua Wolfe
Joshua Wolfe
1,897 Points
Joshua Wolfe
Joshua Wolfe
1,897 Points

I really appreciate the support! I want to learn to code the right way. :)

Alan Ayoub
Alan Ayoub
40,294 Points
Alan Ayoub
Alan Ayoub
40,294 Points

You are not alone!

When you don't know, you don't know. In my opinion, the next best thing to do is to look up the answer.

I've found that there were courses on treehouse that I struggled with and I often looked up the solution on the discussion boards to make sense of what was going on. When I look up answers, I always hand type code so that my mind picks up every detail of the syntax. The power in taking this approach is sometime later I re-took the same course and I did not look up a single answer! So for me, there is power in pushing forward and revisiting courses at a later time to try and plow through course material without help.

Exposure, exposure, and more exposure. Keep putting yourself in a position see code, learn code, and write code.

I hope that helps!