To anyone who needs to hear this. You are smart enough. And you GOT this. Don speaks the truth. You have to just build things. Build things as much as you can even if it's just a small stupid app or website that barley functions. You will always learn something new. I encourage you to even work ahead of the instructor in the tutorial. See what you can do. You will get stuck and you will feel doubt but that is part of the process. Dont try to rush through the jounrey or take the easy path, you won't truly learn that way. Stay consistent with your journey and patient with the process and you will succeed! Good luck!

Love the no nonsense approach. The “just do it” mentality. There is no better way! Thanks Don!

Had that feeling today I've been coding for a month mostly followed tutorials and tried to self teach myself.Finally I got to a blank project and my mind just went blank and had no idea where to start

Every tutorial should have this video as it's prerequisite.

It takes me for ever to finish a tutorial, because I go rouge and build my own project based on those skills. If you only learn something once you don't retain it. Practice Practice and Practice some more. Also take breaks and go back and re-create a project with those same skills. Long term memory... master it. :)

The fear of projects comes from something going wrong when i setup my own environment. In my bootcamp they said we should use wsl for windows and it always led to extra confusion when setting up projects. My point is often with courses and tutorials it makes you feel like you have to do things a certain way, or use certain languages / frameworks etc. Projects are about you doing whatever works for you. If the project you're thinking about only requires jquery don't delay it thinking you need to add react so an employer will be impressed.

Well said Don. Building my own projects and going through the struggles that come with it has helped me progress more than any course I have ever taken.

This was so valuable - thank you Don! I feel really lucky that I'm hearing all of this at the beginning of my coding journey.

I really appreciate your videos man, I'm currently going through a bootcamp and listen to your videos while I code, and you really help me push through the days where I am super frustrated. I love that you are just genuine on what your talk about, its really reassuring. Thank you brother.

Here's what worked for me: 1.Take a well rated course that teaches the concepts with a real world project, this course should be preferably from a tutor that works as a senior+ developer already in a good company. 2.Document all the project with notion and try doing slight changes to it if possible, not big changes, just details, for example: change the logging from application insights to papertrail, use yml instead of the assistant for CICD, use postman instead of swagger, and so on... 3. Do the project again following your notion doc. 4. Build another similar project changing the business logic to make it a more real world scenario. Period. There you have, this simply CAN NOT FAIL, GUARANTEED IF YOU PUSH YOURSELF TO STICK AT IT EVEN IF YOU FEEL YOU ARE NOT DOING PROGRESS, JUST DO IT. ❤🎉

I really needed this video. Your suggestion about building something after a 1-hour module/tutorial to reinforce that concept/topic, and when you said it's the little light bulb and the little wins, instead of aiming for big leaps really resonated with me. The Frustration of things not clicking is REAL. Thank you.

Great topic!! Learn, Train, Apply, Build, and more iterations... Thank You, Don!

I’ve been watching your boot camp reviews/interviews daily while I’m at my current job. Been looking to change careers for almost a year now and the content your channel provides has been such an amazing source of information and has helped me whittle down what bootcamps I’m seriously considering and what sort of preparations I need to have already under my belt to be ready for the eventual onslaught of intense learning.

I needed this, thanks man! 👊

Thanks for this information, I really needed this.

It took me forever to learn this. I have been going to school part time studying CS for the last 7 years all while working full time. I am on the brink of turning 37 and this is my second degree (career changer). I have been also studying on the side because honestly all my school is focused on passing tests and not actually learning. I graduate this year and my degree is literally just a filter for jumping up on listings for recruiters. I came across Scrimba in fall of last year. It was a game changer for my style of learning. I am finally really understanding and building things on my own. I think with ADHD if things don't come quick it makes it hard to stay focused and I end up skipping ahead, literally learning React before I even had the basics of Javascript down. This was a huge mistake on my part. I also didn't realize just how much I didn't know with HTML and CSS. I thought it was silly to study but I was so incredibly wrong. I just feels good to finally feel comfortable and confident moving forward. If anyone else out there has ADHD I highly recommend the Scrimba community. It has helped so much in breaking things down but keeping me engaged.

Just earned a new subscriber. Great video. Most people promote unrealistic expectations. This video has definitely made me look at things different and I know many others will feel the same if they come across this video. Keep it up Don!

That opening tagline got me! LOL!

The biggest problem I have is something I struggle with even in things that OTHER people tell me I'm good at, I just feel inadequate at EVERYTHING. Like, others look at it (my job, for example) and tell me to my face "you're good at your job" and I say thank you but in the back of my mind I just go "I feel like I'm barely getting it done, I'm not fast enough etc. etc." And it makes me feel stupid, like I actually lack the mental capacity to be "good" at something. So it paralyzes me into wanting to do something but never starting.

Thank you. I needed this today.

There are problems and weird bugs you will run into when making something that a tutorial will never cover. There is only one CSS but there are millions of ways of implementing it together.

This is straight fire

11:05 hit me hard LOL. Such a mind shift. Thanks Don 👍

Bro your channel is going to grow real fast, keep it up!

Thank you feeling this way currently 😅.

This video is EXTREMELY underappreciated.

It’s kind of like lego if just following directions or re-branding a project instead of developing something original/new features to break problems down & put the concepts into practice

"It's afte 30 seconds so I can cuss" Lmao dude i didn't know this was a thing

Good video, your coding bootcamp discussion videos have helped a lot. Random question: what type of video recording setup di you have? A mic connected to camera?

I didn't like tutorials I felt that something was wrong with me, but I came to know that is a good thing

My problem right now is that I do projects, but a lot of them are tutorial based. I do my best to customize or personalize them to the best of my ability, but some of the things that I want to actually do seem really far off. For example, I know someone that has a business that they would like to set up online, and it would be so amazing to build an ecommerce site for them, but I haven't even learned how to set up the backend, and setting up stripe alone just doesn't make sense to me right now 😭 Just gonna have to continue focusing on perfecting event listeners and go from there.

It’s really great video. It’s good to get some real feedback from someone to help new programmers(like me) to get our head around all this stuff…😵‍💫

I've only been at it for around a month so I can't offer experienced advice but I have learnt that it is pointless memorising, it's far better to try to understand, that way you know what to google when you want something done.

Hi, am i doing right by mixing tutorial hell to have an idea of what to build and self-teaching?

Here are my answers to the statements in the thumbnail: "Why do I keep forgetting everything": Because you don't redo stuff you've done. In the latest months I have been advocating more and more for not hesitating one second before choosing to redo something from scratch. Say I've been coding something on someone else's laptop out of curiosity, but haven't taken the files with me when I was done. I'm not gonna do whatever I can to call the laptop's owner and have him send me the files. Instead, I won't hesitate to start all over again on my own PC, because only 2 situations can arise: either I can remember everything I did and do it again easily, which means that I mastered whatever I was doing, and I will redo everything quickly. OR, I will have a lot of difficulty redoing everything, falling into pitfalls I didn't fall into the first time, and have to google stuff anew. This means that I did NOT master whatever I was doing, and redoing it from scratch was a good thing. Don't be afraid to reinvent the wheel when you're learning. "I'm not smart enough": Everything is easy, even Quantum Physics or Rocket Science, if you give yourself enough time to learn. Every big challenge can be decomposed into a series of ridiculously easy challenges. You really don't have to be a genius, no matter what your level of intelligence is, you can decompose difficult stuff into easier chunks and tackle each chunk separately. Don't worry about the time it takes you to master something, if you're serious, you're in this for the long run. Of course, if some tutorial promises you to code a game in 1 week starting with 0 coding knowledge, of course you're not going to understand everything and a lot of what you did will seem like magic or voodoo. Tutorial and course authors need to promise you the moon in order for you to select their tutorials/courses, but you have to know better than that. You have to be prepared to spend a lot of time if necessary.

I feel I’m in the opposite where I try to avoid tutorials and learn by docs but I’m not going in depth enough to fully understand or something.

What are some good courses that you recommend Don?

I'm doing this on the side of a 6-day-week so both my cognitive ressources and time are limited. I am trying to establish a routine of choosing small projects. The big problem I almost always have is: The project always seems big to me and the task of sub-secting it into smaller portions takes a good amount of time, too. Any tips on how to size the portions into achievable portions?

Yo Don if I'm someone who's already built multiple landing pages, and a few in React, do you think a boot camp is good for me? I really want to do Coding Dojo and it starts on the 15th, people have been saying bootcamps are better for people with a little experience. Thanks love your videos.

That is my biggest thing is when I dont get something and I break it down to its most simplest form.

Its better to learn to become a plumber going out watching a plumber work than it is reading a textbook on every aspect of plumbing in a classroom. To know programming you have to build stuff, only until you build stuff can you understand what is happening and why its happening. Copy + paste coding and just endless feeding on every aspect of syntax will not get across the understanding of programming. Its like learning chinese from a book and trying to learn every word or sentence, but if you don't know how to go into a chinese restaurant and speak basic chinese to a waiter/ress and understand what they say to you and speak chinese to order in, then whats the point in learning chinese. it is better to totally understand how to write basic programming projects that work and you understand why and how they work, than to waste time running before walking before crawling. It is better to lift 50 pounds on a bench-press for 10 reps in a safe and controlled manner than to attempt 500 pounds and fail and get injured.

I can relate this. 💀

I was grinding in my Java lab acmoment ago And got super frustrated, and mad So i just hit my keyboard soo hard and left to do someting else, i gotta wait until the anger fades away.

Id love to hear 'what tutorial hell isnt'. Is me googling 'how to make a login form using x y z?' And looking at examples to try and figure out why some part my project isnt workimg? I have genuinely no clue. Im building projects but personally im trying to get less and less dependent on looking at others code. Should i feel like shit about my entire portfolio because nothing on it would work if I hadnt looked at other similar projects and examples? Im genuinely unsure about that.

🙌🙌🙌🙌

the fact that this is a tutorial is crazy 🤣

There is always an Indian guys explanation resonating to someone’s brain out there.

Well I'm buying a rubber duck 🦆

okay!!! its after 30 seconds so i can cuss

Me: 600th like les gooo

Who is just watching tutorials and note code along wuth it? Thats stupid 😅 I have a different problem, i can code, can create any kind of project, but if somebody asks me to explain anything, i am getting gaga 😅 i am forgetting how even loop works, whats different between proto and prototype and so on... even i have read those stuff 100times...