I'm lost and I don't know what should be my next steps
I've been learning web dev for a year now I started exactly 1 years ago.
I've learned a lot thankfully and at the beginning I was really lost just like I'm now.
but the difference is I thought I was alone and I had to figure out everything on my own but now I recognize that communities like this one exists and I can ask for help.
anyways as I mentioned I've learned a lot about web dev the past year especially front end up to being comfortable using nextjs to build any app that has a crud and auth in it.
back to the main point which is I'm currently lost I've tried to build something slightly advanced I guess like a zoom clone has has meetings and stuff but I couldn't I got overwhelmed by WebRTC and Web sockets which I wasn't exposed to before this project and when I look at someone like theo and the stuff he's building like t3 chat or sth I really get inspired like how is he like that I wanna be like him I think he's really cool but I just don't know how to get there.
TLDR I want to be an exceptional web developer but I don't know how to get there all I know is how to create an app that has crud ops and auth in it so if anyone knows how to get there please help me out I'm really lost
9 Replies
You have to just keep learning
Ask help
If it helps , especially since Web sockets or WebRTC can be scarY, is refer to guides like a tutorialnor something small
Before building big
Theo is experienced and has worked on many roles so thats how he knows a lot
Im new to Auth my self
And it is overwhelming to learn in depth and build auth from scrath such as hashed password, jwt vs sessions, CSRF tokens etc it just gets deep and deeper
But i look at docs for best practices and tutorials and find them helpful
And now Im making good progrss so yeah just keep it up, if struggling for a while then you have to assess if whether you need to go back to the basics like building a small camera app on browser , backend knowledge of video and image formats before building clone like Zoom
starting small is a really good advice thanks a lot
1 year is still pretty early, so It's good that you recognize your weaknesses. WebRTC is complex and problematic standard, no wonders it gave you problems at this stage.
At this stage I'd suggest reaching out for help in small issues as much as you can - people have had the same issues as you when they started! It's sometimes easier to reach out for more experienced help than googling aimlessly for hours. Also asking for help will earn you benefit of learning how to write google searches (as people tend to respond with
Just Google 'XYZ'). Even this might be a lto of help.
One thing to remmeber is that you are not expected to know everything. Witch any programming, there is a lot that can go wrong along. So don't stick to the plan. Stick to the process: plan, learn, write, refine, plan, learn, write, refine... You won't get complex stuff in one go.
Another piece of advice is to look for internships opportunities - again, to find a place where you can learn from people with more experience. If you're lucky, you'll find mentors, who still remember how hard it is to start and will work with you, so that you can benefit faster from their experience.Theo has said this too... Find something you want to solve, or something you want to build. Start with low hanging fruit. I'm learning frontend and design (backend dev here) and making a basic blog.
When something interesting comes up... run with it. My kids have "TV school" stuff in their homeschool curriculum which is printed in a book. So I spent a couple days making that into an app and learned OCR and youtube libs to turn a pic I took of it into a playlist, because that was annoying.
When something interesting comes up... run with it. My kids have "TV school" stuff in their homeschool curriculum which is printed in a book. So I spent a couple days making that into an app and learned OCR and youtube libs to turn a pic I took of it into a playlist, because that was annoying.
I don't have anyone experienced that I can ask but that's on me I should really increase my social circle and find more online communities like this ( where I feel more comfortable ) to find people that have the same interests as me
yeah I'm not to but I'd like to who doesn't lol it isn't realistic but this is just how my brain works
thanks a lot for your advice it really is enlightening for me
for me personally curiosity is what drives me if I saw something cool I wanna know how did sm1 build this and build my own even if I don't have a use for it
but I should really adopt this mindset it's really helpful thanks
@.Boody Curiosity is the best driver and it's good that you are tapping into that. If you want to be still doing that (even when the topic is much bigger than originally expected), simply split it in problems that you attack one at a time. Rule of thumb is: if you don't know what to do next in any personal project (cause it's too big, too complex etc), simply find a thing that you do know, and implement it. Addressing things you know, will resolve some of the unknowns.
Another thing is, that you do have access to people who can help. Simply ask questions on theo's discord. People do listen and answer. The same on stackoverflow and next.js discord. It won't be as fast as calling more experienced friend, but that's still a set of communities that will help.
i don't have any answers for you necessarily, but i just wanted to say i super duper get how you're feeling and am experiencing exactly the same feelings myself.
i have this deep craving to be a much, much better engineer/developer/programmer than i currently am. i love the work i do, but i am also constantly thinking about how little i actually know in comparison to everything there is to know, and even just how much various individual engineering / programming / development experts i know know.
i desperately want to be on that level. i know that that level of skill is built on years/decades of experience and that there's no way to achieve such a goal myself without continuing to put in the hours myself. but that doesn't stop me from feeling kinda insufficient.
Find internships or build something with another developer. The ability to work with a team is very valuable. There are many different advices and practices which you need to apply according to the situation. Also, people have different preferences and the good code may vary a lot depending on its purpose to be readable, well-optimized, or maybe delivered as fast as possible.
You can research https://www.chingu.io/
Also I heard these guys offering an unpaid internship position in exchange for mentoring https://www.linkedin.com/company/gridiron-survivor/?trk=public_post_main-feed-card_reshare-text
Chingu
Chingu, Inc. - Get out of Tutorial Purgatory. All
self-directed developers run into the same problems. No team
experience, feeling lost working alone, endless tutorials, not
enough finished projects. The good news? Chingu solves them.
that's exactly how I feel but I guess looking at the bright side it motivates me to do better each day so I guess it's not a bad thing after all
it's been a while since I posted this but I'm actually currently a tech lead for a start up I'm managing some interns. it's an unpaid job but I've learned a lot from mentoring and seeing my team's code