Fast or Slow?
Finding a balance between moving through the course material quickly and retaining what I’m learning
speed == "fast" ? "Is there retention?" : "Will this take forever?"
I’m making progress through the program right now - currently in the Procedural Ruby lessons. But I am finding that as I progress, the lessons are fairly straight-forward and I want some way to remember what I’m learning better as I work through the lesson assignments. In college, especially with math courses, I would re-write my notes from class/reading to force myself to consciously restate what I’ve read and hopefully learned. I think this course of action will help me retain more information.
My fear is that I don’t retain the core information well enough that I’m constantly looking up code samples online to remember how to do things. Of course, part of retention is a function of how often I make use of the code I’ve learned. If I implement loops often in my code, I’ll eventually have them memorized. I have to admit, with javascript, I do remember how to create a simple loop from memory, no googling required.
I think the hope is that Stack Overflow will only need to be consulted on complex issues that aren’t core programming concepts we’re learning. I’ve had my fair share of searches on Stack Overflow, but it’s frustrating (and perhaps a bad sign) to have to repeatedly search for code solutions just to make it through writing a program. I’m hoping with a retention strategy I can avoid having to google as much.