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General Discussion

Posted by Robert Mayberry
Robert Mayberry
4,246 Points

Learning Strategy

Just was interested in how other people go about studying and learning on here. I found on a few lessons when I did everything side by side that the teacher was doing it was like I kept having to stop, go back to find answer for quiz etc. So for wordpress I just watched it through, no notes, no quizzes, then once I started back at the beginning it came alot easier

Dave McFarland
Dave McFarland
Treehouse Teacher
Dave McFarland
Dave McFarland
Treehouse Teacher

That's a great strategy Robert Mayberry

I think watching through a video entirely, then re-watching to follow along, take quizzes and code challenges is a very good way to first get the basic idea and then reinforce that idea with repetition and training.

1 Answer

Nicholas Olsen
seal-mask
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Nicholas Olsen
Front End Web Development Techdegree Student 19,342 Points
Nicholas Olsen
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Nicholas Olsen
Front End Web Development Techdegree Student 19,342 Points

I combine the lessons with material I find from other resources. For example I'm partially through the frontend track now, I've found http://www.reddit.com/r/learnjavascript, /r/javascript and /r/frontend are good sources of articles. I've also bought "Javascript the Definitive Guide" and "Professional Javascript for Web Developers."

Obviously I'm not going to get through all of this stuff easily but I'm basically drowning in information now which I think is good.

One thing I've done in the past that I would like to start doing again is using Anki decks. They are digital flash cards that use spaced repitition. This has worked fairly well for me in the past I just have to stick to it.

The big thing I've just started doing that I've found has a lot of potential is going to meetups. The first meetup I tried was very good, but I just went to my second one for PHP last night and it was great. To be honest I wasn't able to keep up because I had come late but watching what they were doing really gave me an idea of what I should look into. Plus they all seemed very friendly. I'm going to try a Javascript meetup next time, but I've got to say that actually meeting other people and talking to them about development seems like a big one.

I've messed around with WordPress in the past. While I haven't done the track yet, I found the book "Pro Wordpress Theme Development" was really helpful for me. The two websites I found useful for WordPress were wpbeginner.com and managewp.org.

The primary thing though is actually applying what you learn. The quizzes and all are great. but after I'm done with the quizzes and code challenges I'll actually start creating something on my own. I try to break my time down into 1/2 education and 1/2 creation. Even if it is just a stupid little project nobody will ever see, it winds up giving me some real experience. I think that has helped me better than anything else.