My Biggest Mistake when learning Web Development as a beginner

I started learning web development in my first year of college. I wanted to learn how to make full-stack web applications from scratch because, just like many others, I had many ideas and wanted to turn them into reality.

I decided to get a web development course on Udemy and learn the art of full-stack web development. A few months later, I had watched over 30 hours of content on web development but still couldn't make a decent project from scratch.

I realized that I had spent way too much time consuming compared to producing.

You might have heard of the term 'tutorial hell' as it's pretty common in the developer community. Tutorial hell is when you keep watching tutorial after tutorial but still feel overwhelmed when trying to code something completely by yourself.

Tutorial hell was exactly where I was stuck, consuming hours of content on Udemy and YouTube as I felt I needed to know everything before starting to work on a project.

I figured out that I need to find a better way of learning web development, and here are my two cents on the topic.

Instead of spending hours watching tutorials and switching between multiple courses and content creators, figure out how you learn the best, and then just start crushing it.

• Some people learn best by watching videos, while others learn by reading original documentation.

• I tried to learn by watching videos, but it didn't work well because I tend to lose focus when I just passively hear someone speak repeatedly, which is the case in video courses.

• So, I tried reading documentations, but that didn't work out well either. Although reading, for me, is more effective as I don't lose focus, I feel that documentations were too complex for me as a beginner.

At this point, I resorted to The Odin Project, a primarily text-based web development curriculum (it's completely free).

As I started following The Odin Project consistently and actively avoided switching courses anymore, I noticed that I was able to focus more on the actual learning as compared to just figuring out what's the 'best' resource.

Furthermore, I finally started working on projects independently, and finishing projects is a fantastic feeling. The Odin Project involves numerous projects throughout the curriculum, so I just followed those along with a few shenanigans that I wanted to make.

Finishing and publishing projects made me feel more confident in my abilities and helped me put things into perspective. Once you start putting your lessons to practice by building a project, it not only allows you to understand what you are actually going to use in the 'real world' but also helps you learn more relevant things.

Conclusion

The crux of this is that you need to figure out what web development curriculum/roadmap works best for you and then just start crushing it.

As you keep following your chosen curriculum, you want to take occasional 'breaks' before proceeding further, and then build simple projects with whatever you know.

For HTML and CSS, these could be simple clones of websites that you can find on frontendmentor.io. If you are following a course/curriculum (like The Odin Project), you should definitely do the projects mentioned there.

I can't exaggerate how important projects are, as you will most likely forget most of what you are learning if you don't apply them. And once you build a few projects, you'll realize that there are a few things you're repeatedly using. These are the things that you actually want to learn. You can only understand what's important once you apply what you learned and build projects.

If you are still reading till the end, I highly suggest visiting The Odin Project to see if it fits your learning style.

Good luck, and code well!