I started the Web development path in March, and so far I was following up nicely. Every concept just made sense and I could understand and build something from.
At the “11. JavaScript Back-End Development” though, things have changed. I just can’t figure out what is being said or asked. I tried reading the documentation and all, but it just didn’t click. I am currently trying to make the “Boss Machine” project and, to my surprise, this one is not in video.
The whole point of this topic is to ask if it is supposed to be this way, or if it is just me who couldn’t grasp the content ?
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@chanchopanza,
From your words I can say that I had a similar experience. I reseted the entire module and did it all over again which helped me, nevertheless It has been very slow. I’m now half through the project. Though I am interested in knowing how you got around it as I am sure that more people will face this obstacle.
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Having just completed this module, I can say that unfortunately this is a fairly complicated and abstract subject… That said the wording in the lessons is not amazingly clear and in some of the exercises is overly ambigious. I can think of one example where a self made function was used as an example but the reader would not have had any idea that this funtion was being required in and it totally and unecessairly confuses the student.
This has been by far the hardest learning module and I had to re-read the lessons several times over AND refer to other parts of the internet (YouTube + FCC) to really get a grasp of what was required. AND despite that, I struggled with the Boss Machine project and needed to refer to the solution code. Although I am happy to say that whilst I could not necessairly put it together without reference myself, by that point I did understand why what was being done, was being done.
Try not to feel discouraged. It definitely isn’t you. It is a tough one (not helped by the material imo). Keep at it. It will click!
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I know this is an old thread but I just wanted to say I feel exactly the same way, really struggling getting through these projects. It’s hard enough just installing the outdated dependencies let alone getting through the ambiguous content.
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If others are like me then I imagine we are tackling the web path in a counter productive way. By that I mean my initial goal was to get through the entire path in a month. I’d spent a month previously on the data path but stopped as I found it was not really something I was interested in once it started getting into heavy python stats based stuff.
To truly learn and fully understand all of the concepts and material involved I’ve come to realise that you need to take time to practice and develop the skills covered in each phase. I now find myself going back to earlier lessons to re-cap on things that I’ve already forgotten.
I’ve heard more experienced folk say that you could easily spend a month learning and then doing developmental projects in HTML and CSS. Instead in 2 months I’ve flown through SQLite, Python3, HTML, CSS, JS, React, Node, Express and I’m now back to SQLIte which seems alien after so much in between.
It’s no wonder we feel it’s tough. It is tough to learn and truly understand the various languages in any case and we make it tougher for ourselves still by ploughing through. Sometimes we just need to remind ourselves to take it steady.
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Personally, I completely agree with all of the above. The module was not clear. Questions and tasks were ambiguous at best. I’ve spent days looking at ‘experts’ on youtube doing the stuff that should be easily taught in this section of the ‘path’. On the other hand, most professional coders I know say that they spend quite a bit of their time googling or youtubing the sdtuff they need to know. BUT, reading around the subject is one thing, and fair-enough; not teaching you the basics is a real let-down. Walk-thu vid to at least see how we should be thinking or approaching the problem would be a min req. res?
Express is needed. Could do better.
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i know this is an old thread, but i have to completely agree- there have been certain aspects of the module that just weren’t clearly explained and the example materials alongside the instructions for the challenges weren’t very well written. I have just completed the express module which they have listed as typically taking around 4 hours - by far the trickiest modules i have encountered and taking me over 3 days to plough through. I hope you dont feel disheartened- there are concepts that we’ll all have to read and attempt to follow along elsewhere, and it’ll slowly stick. sometimes it IS just the reading material and the explanations unfortunately.
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