4 creative tips when learning how to code 🧚🏽♀️
More than halfway through boot camp — and I can’t believe I’M STILL ALIVE! It’s been a real rollercoaster and it’s been a real battle in my head. Am I really good enough? Will I ever get a job as a Frontend developer?
Well if I weren’t Destiny I would maybe have already given up. BUT I am Destiny so I would never give up!
Through all the tough time with learning something completely new and complex it’s actually real fun when you finally understand code structure. And even better, now I’ve found creative ways that helps me to understand and structure my studies easier.
Call me a creative mess, and what’s the best way for a creative mess to learn something new? By doing it with creativity!
That’s why this article will focus on 4 ways — that worked for me, who’s not good at traditional studying — to learn in a creative way!
4 creative tips when learning how to code 🧚🏽♀️
- Do a Google Jamboard to structure everything up — A Jamboard is like a digital whiteboard where you can write and doodle things. You can even make Post its! I use Jamboard to structure up my week - by using my creativity I made a week schedule where I with Post its, structure and divide up my studies. You can’t learn everything in one day + it’s so imported with breaks! With this structure I won’t try to do everything in one day, take breaks & feel less stressed! When I’m finished with a Post it I just put it in the “Done this week” box — and feel so proud of myself when I see all the tasks I managed to finish! 💪🏼
2. USE THE INTERNET: Watch YouTube tutorials / videos with code alongs — We are so privileged with todays technology and you can basically learn anything thanks to the internet. So why don’t use it? Check out youtube tutorial if you think it’s boring to read about something. Do code alongs if you don’t know how to begin and follow the code structure. I can be fun to learn — but you need to be open for it & google, google, google to find the best way to make learning feel fun for you. PS: Look at tutorials that’s from this year, the coding languages changes all the time and you don’t want to learn old stuff. 💻
👇🏽 A tutorial I recommend & that is super accurate for two reasons = it’s for coding in React (that’s a very popular Javascript library TODAY) & coding in React 2021 (it’s not even 2021 yet = sooo ACCURATE):
3. Do creative mind maps with ideas of web/app ideas and designs + start to sketch them out on a paper — I used my whiteboard here to first of all brainstorm ideas for my mobile app. After that I wrote down what the app would do, for example: Special Baby Names App = Generates special baby names for those with no fantasy! When I choose one of the ideas I continued with the design for the app and how it could look. Finally I summarized what the app should do and with which functions. USE COLORS, it’s funnier to play with! 🖍
4. Hard to understand the programming language? Try to find a creative simile for it & PAINT a picture of it and explain it — I love similes and how you can explain something hard with using different word that we are used to & in that understand it! Like in the picture below: I made an illustration in Adobe Illustrator explaining how APIs work (and tried to be funny here cause the API is a woman/man who “works” at the data bank, lol) in code. My illustration is like going to the bank and ask to take out an amount of money from your bank account. But in this case it’s with data.
Hope these tips can help you out — cause they helped me out a lot! 😄📝Please response if you liked this article! 🧚🏽♀️
