Hi folks,
I’m really struggling with learning JavaScript and could use some guidance from people who’ve been in my shoes. I keep getting trapped in this annoying pattern:
First, I watch coding videos or do online lessons. At first it seems okay, but then I get really bored because everything feels too slow or I’ve already seen similar stuff before. I end up fast forwarding or not paying attention.
Then, I think I should just code something myself, maybe build a small project or practice what I learned. But as soon as I open my code editor, I have no clue what to build or how to use anything I supposedly learned. Everything feels impossible and I give up quickly.
Finally, I get annoyed and go back to watching more tutorials, thinking they’ll help me understand better. But then the whole thing starts over again.
It feels like I’m just watching content all the time but never actually getting good at coding real stuff on my own.
Did anyone else get stuck like this when learning JS? What actually worked for you to get unstuck? How do you go from just watching tutorials to actually building things yourself?
I really need some practical tips!
Thanks!
i totally feel you! i was in the same boat for ages. simple projects like a todo list can make a big diff. just google stuff you don’t get, it’s okay to make mistakes. you’ll find your groove eventually!
Active coding broke me out of tutorial hell. Stop watching passively - pause every few minutes and recreate what they just showed from memory. Can’t do it? Rewatch until you can. Yeah, it’s frustrating when a 30-minute tutorial takes 2 hours, but you’ll actually remember stuff.
Skip the pressure to build original projects right away. Take their tutorial project and change one tiny thing - different colors, an extra button, new text. These small tweaks teach you way more about how code works than binge-watching ten more tutorials.
My breakthrough happened when I ditched tutorials as my main learning method and started using them just for reference. A game changer was picking one real problem I wanted to solve - a simple calculator to split restaurant bills with friends. If I hit a wall, I searched for specific solutions instead of binge-watching entire courses. I had to accept that feeling lost and constantly looking stuff up is totally normal. I probably hit MDN docs and Stack Overflow fifty times while building that calculator, but by the end, I actually understood closures, DOM manipulation, and event handling in ways no tutorial ever taught me. Pick something you genuinely need or want, even if it feels way too ambitious.
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