Just In Time Learning

There are several programming languages and frameworks being eagerly thrown around in the web developer world, making it easy to get lost in 'all the things'. There may even be communities that offer open source projects to beginners to help the learning process, which is great 👍🏾. However, something to ask yourself is what is their version of beginner vs your version?

Example: A community I'm a member of is playing with the idea of having a beginner-friendly member-built project, where newbies would feel comfortable contributing to help them learn and gain experience. The group host specifically emphasised that if the project gets the green light, it would be HTML, CSS and (plain) JavaScript based.

Care to guess what happened❓

Someone jumps in with "Well React would be easier because..." Needless to say I was immediately turned off.

Something that's so common in the developer space is many forget they were once newbies and what that was like. On top of that, everyone does not learn at the same pace. Development isn't learned in a day, week, month, or year for that matter. What do all your favourite developers say? It's lifelong learning 💻📚.

📌 Lest I ask again: What is their version of beginner vs your version?

Ironically, many experienced devs emphasise the importance of understanding the foundations of front end (HTML, CSS, JS), and not rushing through them for the sake of frameworks. In their words, "Frameworks will constantly change, but the basics are most important."

I've even seen some seasoned developers say how CSS frustrates them. Then there are others who are amazing with their creations 😍. CSS Art & Animation you'll be seeing me 😉.

Of course the enthusiasm of learning the things that build the web we use daily is the excitement of every newbie, but pushing loads of things not understood yet doesn't work. It will cause new developers to give up because there's so much to learn, or gatekeepers kill their dreams because they're not at that level yet 👎🏾.

Something I've been more intentional about is not consuming content about something I haven't learned yet or goes over my head. If it's something I know I need to learn for front end, I bookmark it in a specified folder for later. Otherwise, I keep scrolling. This could be especially helpful for you if you're following a structured tutorial or bootcamp, as most likely you'll be guided on how to do 'what' and 'when'. Trying to submit a pull request without first understanding the basics of how to make something display on a page, Git and GitHub just adds more confusion.

I'll keep walking along building foundational knowledge with learning HTML and CSS. Don't think I'm not looking forward to learning JavaScript when the time comes...or scared to from all the confusion, tears and frustration I've seen 😬.

Go at your own pace and learn just in time.