Hello, I would like to know if you have any advice on how to take notes and remembering things while going through the courses. I’m now going through the 30-day.
I might be a minority in doing this, but I still take notes by hand, with a pen and paper.
These are generally fairly high-level, and only go into specific detail if there’s something that it takes me a few goes to understand.
To give you an example, although these are typed (not hand-written) the gist is the same:
JavaScript Notes
Functions
Functions in JS can be defined in a number of ways. The “traditional” function declaration is similar to several other languages, looking like:
function functionIdentifier(parameters, optional) {
// JS functions have block-scope; variables defined with "let" here exist only within the block.
let blockScopeVariable = "some value";
// default return value if not otherwise specified in JS is "undefined"
return "some other value"
}
ES6 also introduced the concept of “arrow functions” (similar to a lambda in other languages), which are written like:
const arrowFunctionIdentifier = (parameters, optional) => {
// code block as usual
let arrowVariable = "yet another value";
return "42";
}
That’s just an example; it is impossible to be prescriptive about the notes you ought to take, because the notes that you need and which you will find helpful are unique to you.
As a recommendation, though, I would suggest that you take notes of the following:
- General notes on new concepts as they are introduced, like my functions example;
- Detailed notes on anything which you get stuck on, so (for example) if you find yourself frequently struggling with a
forloop, then you should make sufficient notes on for loops to help you write them correctly every time until they stick.
As you go along, in whatever course you’re doing, when you get to the end of a lesson you may find it helpful to note down as much of the lesson content as you can remember without skimming back through the lesson.
Once you’ve made notes on everything you can remember, then go back through it and see whether you missed anything out. If you did, you know those bits which perhaps you didn’t retain as well as the bits you remembered at the end - and which bits you may need to revisit.
One last piece of advice I would offer you is to remember that educating yourself on coding, or anything really, is not a sprint. The 30-day challenge isn’t a competition to see how far you can get through the material in that time; it is a challenge of your time management to set aside a little time every day to learn the content of whatever path or course you’ve settled on.
Let’s say you’ve decided you want to learn Python 3. If, by the end of your 30-day challenge, you’ve got to the end of the Python 3 course you might feel accomplished. (The estimate for that course is 25 hours, so that’s less than an hour a day over 30 days.)
If you’ve got to that point, but you still can’t write a working function or keep getting for-loops wrong, then sure you’ve finished the course but you’ve not really assimilated the content. The whole point is to be able to use what you’ve learned, right? If you get to the end of the course and can’t reproduce the stuff you’ve learned, that’s no good.
This post has got a bit longer than I intended, so to summarise:
-
My notes will not be the same as your notes, but as a starting point:
1.1 Make general notes of every new concept, and
1.2 Go into greater detail on anything that you find difficult or get stuck using; enough detail that you can use your notes to get them right every time.
1.3 As you progress and make notes, adjust your note-taking as you learn what works for you. (Your notes are a unique, and personal, thing.) -
At the end of each lesson, write (or type) out as much of the content as you can remember. This will make it easier to spot gaps in what you’ve retained.
-
The 30-day challenge isn’t a race; it’s a test of consistency, not speed. It’s about showing up every day and putting the work in to understand the content, not just sprint to the end.
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perfect idea , I was looking for this kind of group to learn JavaScript and CSS
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Hello, thank you for your kind reply.
The advice on note taking is helpful.
I’m just a little confuse with some of concepts in your notes.
I believe that by looking to each term on google I will understand more.
Terms like block-scope, let
The blockmay be the part inside the paragraph {}
Anyway I will come back on it later. And my goal is to create a portfolio with my journalist work while learning how to create a website.
Thank you
My intention with that snippet was to demonstrate how I take notes, not to provide a concrete explanation of the topics or even notes that you ought to copy. As I said in my previous post, my notes are not your notes.
If you’re working on either the JavaScript course, or the Web Development path, you will eventually get to both the let keyword (which is one way of declaring a variable in JavaScript) and the concept of scope; so, don’t worry too much if they presently don’t make any sense to you. 
I stopped taking notes ages ago; but, that was when I realized by the Peter Principle that I was maxed out. I had reached the ceiling of my competency and hit a plateau. From then on learning for me has been intuitive, albeit volatile. Oh I do keep some notes, but where they are when I need them is another thing entirely.
This is not to say keeping notes is not important. If you’re not brimming with Keystone coils you’re not studying for any kind of test. You need those notes, don’t be mistaken.
I have a banker’s box full of just the notes from my senior year in Physics. Mind that was decades ago, but those notes helped me to the second highest mark in the province, and I was an adult learner at 40.
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I’d like to be a part of this!
Hi! I have been spending a lot of time during lock down on here and a couple of other online courses learning HTML/CSS, Javascript and Python. I have built a few websites in wordpress and template editors but not from scratch. I love the lessons on here and I am looking forward to starting a few projects of my own. I think I learn best by making things and figuring out why things aren’t working as planned! If anyone has a small project they are working on and wants to join up to do it that would be cool. I have an idea for a dungeon crawler sort of text adventure and I think that will be my project. I will write it in Javascript as that is what I am more confident in and then remake it in Python since the logic should be similar, just different syntax. I hope to make a small site to display the projects that I make. I look forward to getting to know you all a bit.
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Hello…I’m just a starter and I would like to learn more about HTML
I’m not a complete beginner but I started my Journey last year and wanted get more exposure with different languages. I wanted to know if anyone has any projects I can shadow or perhaps be part of?
I am also interested in group study but I need some mentors also guyz please figure out this soon so we start studying together from Monday I also created slack channel with one member and study plan on trello
Any group that is formed will remain on this platform. Soliciting members to your own private channel is not permitted and is viewed as spam, with the requisite consequences.
Hi. Could I please join the group study? I just started Codeacademy, thought, and I’m not sure that’s alright…
i want to learn Js and find friends helping me with it
This might be the wrong place to ask this but… isn’t there also a slack channel/community for Pro users? I’m on the discord server but I’m curious about slack too (mainly to get used to the tool) for trying to connect virtually with others since there isn’t a good/big meetup community where I’m from. I recall reading something about a “lifelong slack Pro community” but I can’t find it. Thanks in advance!
Hi there. We do not have a Slack workspace for Pro members. You can find your peers on Discord as well as here in the forums.
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me too, lets study together
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- I’m now starting my web development then can you suggest me any website for my study and various languages for study can anyone explain how to develop web site
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please put me in as well.
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