Curious about other members' methods of learning.

I have been a member for about a month or so and I have learned a lot. As far as self-learning techniques, the most productive I've been is utilizing the concepts in the videos and implementing them into my own projects. Applying the principles allows me to operate in critical thinking and problem-solving skills. I stopped the videos often and take notes.

Prior to enrolling at treehouse, I had previous knowledge of HTML and CSS. JavaScript was a whole new world to me, however, but it makes more and more sense everyday I work with it.

sublime text editor gimp github

Hi Jared! I've been member for about a month or so too and also I've learnet a lot. I'll try to answer your questions :D!

How long did you have to learn on Treehouse before you could start applying your skills towards a career?

I think this is a break point for everyone who is self taught. Every time you are learning something this way, the questions "Am I ready?" or "Do I know enough stuff to start off by myself?" appear and mostly of us just never feel ready or think that we know already enough stuff to start off a project or landing a job interview. So I think that after a month or so of learning how to code , you are ready to start your own project, even if it's not a complex one, you can do it!

Would you recommend watching the videos and working in Workspaces simultaneously, or some other way?

I actually launch Workspaces every time I'm watching a video and try to interact as much as I can and follow along. Of course some time around you will need to pause the video and try the code and see if it works otherwise you might get lost or you wouldn't understand some concepts properly.

How many times did you have to repeat an entire course or lesson because you had not yet comprehended it?

I think it depends on the level of the knowledge you are trying to adquire. Something simple like your first html tags or so , shouldn't demand you that much like watching the video several times. On the other hand , complex concepts like http request, or objects may take you a little further exploring other sources or watching the video again in order to get a properly understanding of it.

How do you feel about learning different courses/programming languages simultaneously? Good idea, or bad idea?

It depends on which different programming languages are we talking about in here. Obviously if you are learning html, css or javascript, you would be oblige to interact between them in order to understand them better , and even if you are only learning JS , you will end learning something about the other languages around it too. But I think I would find difficult to learn C and Web programming at the same time ie.

How do you learn? What works best for you?

I'll try to watch/read something everyday even if it's only a couple of videos or a short review about some method or something about what I'm learning atm. Then I also try to code a little bit everyday because I think you have to have a good balance between learning and executing/practicing what you've learnt. Other things I found interesting doing is setting up projects using the technologies I've just learn or try to create something different from what I've taught in the videos. Getting yourself motivated is a must too because there's nothing worst than trying to learn/practice if you don't feel like it. Don't do it if you don't want to, force yourself to do something just doesn't work for me.

What course have had the most fun learning?

I enjoy the way Chalkers , Dave McFarland and Nick Pettit teach so I think their are the courses I like the most learning from.

Do you use any third party resources?

Yeah of course, I like reading books about the subjects I want to learn and also use other sites as the Mozilla Developer Network, Stack Overflow , API's documentation pages, youtube videos, google and so on.

I hope you find my answers useful and my english, not so painful to read!

If you want to reach me you can tweet me @naha_hs or send me an email from my profile!

Cheers and keep learning!

I understand how you feel, I have the same problem as well !!! Do you happen to know someone who needs a web page? Maybe a family member who needs a page to display a portfolio or to start a new project! Maybe you could help with that and It also helps you to build your own portfolio and skills! I also try to replicate things , I just started to code a blog with PHP and MySQL , that's another way to learn how something was build or how something works. You would come up with some ideas of your own eventually...maybe when trying to replicate some code, you would find a solution for a problem with that code or some addons that could be made in order to improve what it's already build.