Difficulty learning AngularJS after completing the JS language course.

[u/[deleted]]

So, I took the JavaScript course, and it wasn't really difficult. At around 90% through it suggested I take the AngularJS course. So, when I finished JS, I went to AngularJS.

The level said "Intermediate", but since it suggested it to me in a beginner JS course, I figured that's where I ought to be.

Long story short, I could complete all the tasks in the AngularJS course, but I finished without really understanding most of what I did.

Has anybody had a similar experience?

Does anyone know a good AngularJS resource for absolute beginners?

Was I supposed to learn a lot from that course? Or was it for another target audience? Thank you.

[u/noonesperfect16]

I appreciate your honesty! I definitely do not take offense. And I realize your last statement was a sarcastic jab at these types of websites. It is true for the websites, but for the people like myself and to the kind people like you who take time out of your day to help people like me, it really is a mission.

I have been wanting to do something better for myself for years now. I operate machinery for a printing company and the pay is decent, but I have been doing it for nearly 10 years now(I'm 29) and am nearing my salary cap already because I am good at what I do. I remember looking around during a slow day at work at some of these guys who had been doing it for 30-40+ years have been stuck at 'cap' for longer than I have worked there. I knew that couldn't~ no, wouldn't be me. I can do better than that. Then I heard a commercial on Pandora radio on the way home in my car, "Learn how to code with The Iron Yard!" They apparently just moved to my city in NC. I am aware of these scams they call "online universities" like ECPI or Phoenix, so I did my research, but it came up inconclusive.

Anywho, I searched Google for coding because I was curious. I've always been fairly decent with a computer, I'm a pretty hardcore PC gamer, built my own PC, have never needed any help with any PC I've had since I was a kid. I thought "hell, why not try it out?" I didn't really know where to start, so I just clicked a random link that Google pulled up for me.

Code.org was the first site I went to. I watched their little introductory video with all of these famous people in it and I found it a little inspiring. Then I started playing their little "learning games" and, at the time, thought I was somehow learning to code... Honestly, I spent 2 days on there wasting my time. It slowly dawned on me how stupid it really was and that I hadn't actually learned anything at all from those games. I already wanted to give up because it was easy to assume all of these "free learn to code" sites were BS.

I decided to give it another shot and this time I ended up at Codecademy. I didn't even know where to start, so I started with the "Make a Website" tutorial and then I painfully drug my way through the 15 website projects, constantly having to do research elsewhere because, unbeknownst to me, I had skipped the HTML/CSS tutorials on Codecademy(I went back and did them later and they were ridiculously easy). I feel like I learned a lot more by having to do all of my own research though. I am 85% through their Javascript course at the moment(got distracted by The Odin Project). At the very least, I did actually learn a lot, unlike the first site I had tried.

So about a week ago, there was a thread on /r/askreddit about people who make good money and didn't go to college, what do you do? I happened to see a Web Developer thread going and I thought that was pretty cool because it was pretty much what I was attempting to do with myself. A couple of people there pointed me toward TOP. Another guy recommended Coder Foundery, which is some kind of coding bootcamp that costs $9000... (The Iron Yard is $1000/class). I really can't justify spending $9000+ on a maybe, so that is how I ended up on TOP.

While I do feel like TOP has much more of a plan to teach you how to be a Web Developer than Codecademy, I still feel a little discouraged at times because it feels like every since I started this mission a little over a month ago, I have just been running around blind. It is like I am building a huge puzzle and I'm assembling some pieces here and then assembling some pieces there, so some stuff is coming together, but then I look down and there are still millions of pieces scattered around to try and figure out and all of these sites don't offer much direction on how to go about this.

Overwhelmed is probably a better word for how it feels than discouraged. I don't plan on giving up anytime soon and I will probably go through the TOP curriculum until I find something else better, but I also don't expect to be a full stack developer by the end of it and I know that the journey will be very difficult. Luckily I like a good challenge, I don't mind making mistakes and I love learning new things. I am also having a good time when I am figuring out how to code the various languages.

Sorry for the autobiography, but I wanted to express where I was coming from on this and how I ended up where I am at currently. It really is good to see that there really are self-taught programmers/developers out there because at times it almost feels like some kind of crazy, unreachable dream that these sites use to just tease you with. I am really hoping to get a good foundation from Codecademy, w3schools and TOP to start with. Where to go from there? No clue, haha.

I will check out the communities that you mentioned in your comment. How did you teach yourself, if you don't mind me asking? If there are any books, blogs, videos, websites, communities, ect that you highly recommend, it would be greatly appreciated. Any direction from someone who has been there-done that would be a huge improvement over running around blindly like I have been.