Weekly Update #5 - Getting stuck by raikuhen

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· @raikuhen ·
$15.26
Weekly Update #5 - Getting stuck
![Banner.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmX3rRxGFdUEfm1RAskk7wtvNWahKwoStE27pDrz4nB5ZA/Banner.jpg)

Hi!

This weekly update is gonna be fairly short, mainly because not much happened this week. Besides that, I also need to shorten these updates a little, because the last 4 were quite long.

Before I start I'd like to thank @fitinfun for all the support and for constantly giving me new ideas and pushing me towards creating all kind of new things, it helps a lot, so thank you!

Now let's start with the update.

![coding.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmWaJMEs338TVkP5vNtpvXBNhwW6svt8LyGoYX6zd4qhhz/coding.jpg)

Coding didn't go all that well this week, even though I did learn a few things from my experience.

Long story short, years ago when I started learning how to build websites for the first time I used, like I use now, FreeCodeCamp to learn HTML, CSS and especially JavaScript. I already knew quite a lot about the first two languages, but I was lacking knowledge when it comes to the third one, and after I heard quite a lot of good things about FreeCodeCamp, I decided to give it a try.

One of the main reasons I stopped using it soon after I started was because I thought that the way they were teaching JavaScript was fairly bad. They were giving you all the necessary information to do basic stuff, and after that they made you solve small challenges on your own.

The problem was that those challenges were often a lot harder that you'd expect and required a different approach than what they taught you until that point. That frustrated me, because I was often stuck on one single challenge for days, and I eventually decided to quit.

Same thing happened this week. I finished more than half of the "Basic JavaScript" section from the JavaScript course and I was given a challenge, where I simply got stuck. I couldn't understand how to solve it. For those who used FreeCodeCamp in the past, the challenge is called "Record Collection".

Thing is, while I knew the code I needed to use in order to finish the challenge, I couldn't use it the right way to actually get the result I wanted. I spent most of this week trying to finish the challenge on my own, and just yesterday I got tired of it - so I "cheated" and I looked at the solution.

But I wasn't satisfied. I expected to look at the solution and realize what I was doing wrong, but to my surprise, I was still confused. So, willing to actually understand why my code wasn't working, even if it was almost the same as the one in the solution, I started doing some research.

Luckily, I found [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmcKUL1Gm98) video where the person who made it solved the challenge and explained his code that was different than mine and the solution on FreeCodeCamp, and after watching it several times, I tried to solve the challenge again, on my own. It took a few tries, but after I watched the video I mentioned and after I changed the logic I was using a little, I finally wrote the right code!

What's more important - I understood it! I knew why everything worked, and why my previous examples didn't, which, in my opinion, is a success, even if I spent most of my week on that particular challenge.

But another thing I found was an [article](https://medium.com/@TheOnlyRealTodd/why-free-code-camp-is-magnificent-a0913f1aaa8d) on Medium talking about FreeCodeCamp and about that particular challenge as well. The way the author put it, FreeCodeCamp isn't necessarily the best resource out there that will teach you how to go from not knowing how to code to becoming a professional really fast.

FreeCodeCamp will offer you the necessary information to start coding fairly simple things, and then will offer you challenges that require you to use the information they gave you, and sometimes a little more.

That's because the website wants to teach you something more than just the code itself - searching for solutions. People usually say that you cannot be a good programmer without knowing how to properly use Google, and I have to agree. Even after learning HTML and CSS fairly well until this point, I still have many moments when I just don't understand or remember something, and I have to search it using Google.

It's the same with JavaScript and FreeCodeCamp - they teach you some stuff, but it's up to you to solve the challenges that are too difficult, and to understand more complex concepts. They want to teach you how to find information for yourself, especially when you don't understand something, and how to not give up when you fail.

As frustrating as that may be, it makes sense, and I'm glad they are doing it that way, because coding is one of those things that can annoy you really fast and make you quit learning eventually. By doing what they do on FreeCodeCamp, they teach you how to stick to problems, do your research and solve them on your own.

The article I mentioned did another great thing for me, which was showing me that there were a lot more people who didn't understand how to solve that particular challenge. To be honest, I felt kinda dumb at first, because I thought for a few days that I didn't pay enough attention or that I'm not smart enough to solve that challenge.

But after seeing that a lot of people had the same problem, it made me feel better. I wasn't some special person that couldn't solve a simple problem, but the problem itself was fairly hard and required quite a lot of thinking.

Anyway, that's pretty much all I did this week - finishing one challenge, more or less. It's not a lot, but I'm glad I understood how to solve it and how to properly use and access Objects in JavaScript.

So, let's go to the next section.

![3D.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUBTLXokjF4K376fTemkwjMgV1sJ12kYqs93kDhUdvnza/3D.jpg)

While I didn't do A LOT this week in terms of activity variety, one thing that I finally managed to do is finishing the third part of my scene in Blender. It took a while, but it's finally done. I just need to add a few very small details in it and that's it.

Now I need to work on the fourth part, which may take some time because it involves quite a lot of small details. I need to do some research and look at a lot of different pictures, but if everything ends up looking the way I think it will, then it's worth it.

After I'm done with that part, I'm gonna have to decide whether I want to work on another one, or if I just need to add a few more details to the existing parts of the scene or not.

Lastly, I'm gonna have to texture everything, but since by the time I'll start texturing I'll be done with all the modelling, hopefully finishing adding textures to everything won't take a long time. I also I can find the textures I need, so I don't have to create them myself, which could take quite a while.

I'll have to see how things will end up working.

<hr />

Well, that's pretty much it!

Sorry I didn't talk about more things, this week was total chaos in terms of sleep and energy (my sleep was bad, for some reason, because I kept waking up in the middle of the night), but hopefully next week is gonna be better.

Now that I finished working on that coding challenge I can go back to learning, which will involve both FreeCodeCamp and maybe other courses or books. Maybe I'll even start reading more JavaScript documentation.

At least I finished working on the third part of the 3D scene, so that's that. I can't wait to start working on textures and see everything come to life.

But yeah, that's it for this update, see you next week!
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@curie ·
Congrats on a Curie vote!
Hi raikuhen,
<div class="pull-right">
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This post  has been upvoted by the Curie community curation project and associated vote trail as exceptional content (human curated and reviewed).  Have a great day :) <br>
 
Visit <a href="http://curiesteem.com/">curiesteem.com</a> or join the <a href="https://discord.gg/G6RPUMu">Curie Discord community</a> to learn more.
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@raikuhen ·
Wow, thank you very much, I really appreciate the support! :)
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@theironfelix ·
$0.02
Heyo! ~^^~<br>
Of course introductions before the update (like how this is in the art section by the way; no "coders" or SteemIT tag?), always nice~<br>
Well that sucks that the coding schools don't cover the necessary or general methods of coding (or at least the skills you needed to get around challenges), it really is frustrating to deal with one thing when you've been taught something out of left-field. Hmm, Java code and collections... not two things I would ever want to put together, I rather do it in a different coding software. But like my Babcia always said to my mother: if you ain't cheating, you ain't living! And yeah, Google nowadays is that contingently useful pitstop as a benchmark of good and bad programmers as I noticed as well. But yeah, teaching people how to actually find the solution or corrections to a coding problem/error is an infinitely useful skill as well.<br>
Well that's interesting on the 3D modeling scene, truly with what you did... even though you told us nothing and my only general direction is the white/blank map, wire structures and texture spheres (local). (Good banners as well.) Otherwise horah on everything!<br>
<center>So happy coding, happy modeling and happy steeming!</center>
👍  ,
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@raikuhen ·
Hi!

This article is in the art section instead of coding because I set the tags before writing it, and since I planned on sharing some of the work I finished related to 3D, it would've made sense to add "art" as the first tag. I ended up not adding images, since I want to share most of it or everything when it's ready, and forgot to edit the tags. Sorry for the confusion!

FreeCodeCamp does a decent job as far as I can see with teaching people how to use the code itself, but when it comes to challenges, they ask you to combine code in ways they didn't teach you, and that makes it frustrating as hell.

However, as you said as well, forcing people to use google and to search for solutions to all the problems that appear after combining code in different ways and trying to solve the challenge many times  is a really useful skill that FreeCodeCamp does a good job at teaching people.

I just wish they would tell people from the beginning that they create challenges with that purpose in mind, because some people may simply get frustrated and give up thinking the challenges are poorly made (or they did mention all that but I just didn't see it - not sure).

And the 3D scene will come, at some point in the future, after everything's finished. I'm not sure how long it will last, but the second it's done, I'm posting it here.

Thanks for reading and commenting! :)
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@theironfelix ·
$0.02
Welcome for the comment! ~^^~
Ah, well I was getting that vibe one way or the other but decided to commentate on that aspect~
Yeah, being explicit doesn't hurt from time to time. Especially for people new to the field and when people don't have so much free time to hack away. However, a skill that needs to be reinforced in this day and age to be quite honest.
Well, good luck with that :p
<3!~
👍  ,
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