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satya jr
3,351 PointsMemorising syntax and other programming stuff
Hi folks... I recently joined Web designer learning adventure. I am really enjoying the fantastic content on this site.I recently completed html deepdive. One thing is really bothering me!
I am able to understand every class very clearly so far. But I started to feel it is little to much to memorise all the content they are teaching . As I have plans to complete designer and developer adventures, It is obvious that there is much more on my way. How do you Folks handle this? Do we really have to memorise all the tags attributes and programming syntax for every langauge we learn? If there are any special techniques to learn programming please let me know
4 Answers
Scott Paterson
26,869 PointsI think that a lot of people would find it very hard to remember every element and selectors and so forth, heck i am a real scatter brain and i have to go over and study stuff frequent.I think as long as you know solutions to situations to where you may need code is a good start.
Scott
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsI don't focus on remembering syntax for all the different languages, what functions are built in and available to use by default, etc. I do however know how to find those answers very quickly online. A lot of the basic stuff I do have memorized. But even for something as simple as a box shadow in CSS, I can't remember the syntax. I believe it's X coordinate, Y coordinate, blur, radius, color; but instead of guessing I'd go here http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/css-box-shadow/ and would have my answer in about 3 seconds.
The best way to memorize it is by using it.
Claudia Machado
2,959 PointsYou will end up memorizing what you use more frequently (certain applications also have code hinting, which can help, but sometimes actually gets in the way). For the rest, use a cheat sheet/reference!
satya jr
3,351 PointsYour responses are quite relieving. I do research online to write code, but i had a feeling that this process is kind of cheating. Good to know its quite normal and essential to do research online.
Scott Paterson,kevin korte and claudia Machado Thanks all for your valuable responses!
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsIt's not cheating...it's trying! Lol.
I feel it's more important to learn what options, features, and things can be done with the language you're using than remember the syntax. The syntax can always be looked up online easily.
I was writing some PHP code yesterday, and before I even started I opened php.net and got the search bar ready.