How do you retain your knowledge in coding?

Hey Jesse and Welcome to Treehouse,

Myself, personally, I have a stack of notebooks as well. But, to answer your question, I believe that very few (if any) coder actually remembers every single line of usable code. With all the different 'documentation' sites and 'official' reference sites, there really is no need to remember EVERYTHING. As long as you remember the basics (and a bit beyond) and the general structures and syntax, when you need to do something that you can't quite remember, you just "Google" it and look up the documentation.

I began my learning thinking I had to and was trying to remember every single thing, but soon realized that was pretty much impossible. With so many languages and codes...

To stay sharp, however, you do need to constantly practice and constantly learn. I design and code 'dummy sites' that will never see the light of day. But these help keep your skills sharp and help to learn new things.

I also find the community here on Treehouse very helpful with learning and with remembering. Questions from students that I know the answer to, I answer to help them learn, but often I find questions that I can't quite remember how... So I look it up... watch the video again... figure out the answer (again)... and explain it to the 'asker.' You would be surprised how much teaching others helps you to learn and retain.

Good Luck. Stay strong. Keep Coding! :)

The key is to keep practicing everything you learn, the more code you write the more you will remember, and with time you won't forget the fundational concepts of programming and you can learn a new programming language or technology with minimum effort. One important point is that experienced programmers do not remember everything, we are not machines, but we know where to find the answers to things we don't know or we don't remember, for example looking in google or a technical book. Don't be discouraged if you forget some things about code, it is natural during the learning process, just keep practicing.

You keep on coding. You write code in your own words.

Just keep on coding and practicing. Or you can do it the chinese way. Write standards until you learn the word.

Once you hit 10,000 points you'll be like I can do that. You'll see.

Well, the same way you get to Carnegie Hall...practice, practice, practice ;)

Also, nobody seems to have mentioned storing code snippets in XCode, that is a great way to keep things at your fingertips. I also find it useful to frequently review topics you "know" or "know about" but don't fully grasp. The more learning connections you can have to new material the great the chance it has something to stick to.

Also, as important as practice is, getting others to review your code is CRITICAL, otherwise you may find yourself repeating back habits, rather than just learning the right way.