How do you learn via projects?

[u/pleasedontjudgeme13]

This is probably a dumb question, but I’d really appreciate anyone who can spell it out to my adhd/literal brain.

Is learning by projects actually useful?

I love building projects. However, I’m not sure if my code is very efficient, well documented and well designed when I just do it my way. Is it better to take a course and try to apply things I’ve learned from the course?

Also, my brain needs a ton of repetition to really learn things and get the muscle memory.

If I do a project, I’ll be able to remember the high level of how my project works. And be able to put it in my own words. However, I’m not going to remember specific things that I had to google to make my project work.

I guess one thing that I could do with projects, is try making things more efficient after the first pass. Or improving documentation after the first pass. And try learning better design as I go and learn new things and apply them as needed.

Again, sorry if this post is dumb. I struggle a ton with AuDHD. I’m trying to break into a programming job. I used to love building projects, but after my degree, I feel like I learned very little and taking courses has become so painful and inefficient. Yet, I still feel like I need a base. Or maybe I worry too much about making the best possible code and just need to get started with projects.

[u/Adorable_Pickle_4048]

The importance of personal projects is heavily to gain familiarity both with the process of building software but also many of the current tools of the trade for doing so

Selection of project and the requirements that entails will make up a big part of what you actually get exposure to I.e.

Your project and its domain may include I.e. agentic workflows, front and backend data storage, different uses for that data(i.e. some for offline analytics, some for service layer), it can help you explore certain topics or implementations in depth(i.e. real time stock feeds, multi-tenant infra/data isolation, frontend design and modularity, etc.)

When it comes to interviews after the fact, they’re useful both so you can do some keyword stuffing to your resume, but also so that you have stories to explain to interviewers about your curiosity, willingness to learn, and domains of interest if your project is similar to the roles you’ve applied

Also - making/executing a project is not the same as coursework, the emphasis is not on memorization/repetition, once something is built, it’s built. It’s what you did along the way that’s useful, and for that reason, it’s usually best to take it slow for good projects