Carl Anderson
Beginner
No, People Aren't Learning to Code in 3 Months
At the start of your programming journey, it's natural to wonder how long you need before you're up to scratch. Does it really only take 3 months, or is there more to the story?
General
Career
How to Apply for Jobs as a Self-Taught Software Developer
You've been diligent. You've spent a few months (or years) grinding out code in your spare time. Dozens upon dozens of brain-melting hours doing coding problems. It's finally time to take the first steps to your new life as a Software Developer. You prepare your resumé, and make some applications.
Beginner
3 Methods to Actually Remember What You Learn in Coding Tutorials
When you first deal with a new topic, coding tutorials are great. Rather than continually grasping at straws and struggling your way through a project, the instructor conveniently shortcuts all this pain - all you have to do is follow along. After several hours of painstaking copying, you have a
Beginner
How to self-teach JavaScript
There's no denying that self-teaching JavaScript is difficult - although you have the benefit of always working on areas that interest you, it can be difficult to find direction in your learning. You're continually asking yourself: are you're doing the right thing? Is there something important you're missing? What are
Beginner
When Are You Ready to Freelance as a Front-End Developer?
When can I take a full front-end web project and start working as a freelancer, and how much knowledge do I need? A newbie developer asked this in the JavaScript Facebook group – and it's a good question. After all, when you've been grinding out several months of online courses, a
Beginner
How to Get Past JavaScript Tutorials: Copy & Paste
"I can follow the tutorial perfectly, but when I try to do it by myself, I have no idea I'm doing." Sound Familiar? It's one of the most frustrating situations you can experience as a developer because... what do you do? You were trying to learn how to create projects,
Beginner
Practice JavaScript by Breaking Things Down
The most important skill you can have as a developer is knowing how to break tasks down - and it's a skill you can practice without a computer. As a beginner developer, one of the most frustrating situations you'll encounter is attempting to complete a simple task, but you have
How to Find Ideas for Good Practice Projects
Nothing is more discouraging than having spent months of effort learning JavaScript, reading dozens of articles and books, grinding through countless lessons and tutorials, only to have no idea how to do any of it by yourself. It turns out that those courses you took didn't completely prepare you to
On the Edge: Finding (and Fixing) Cross Browser Issues
It's happened to all of us. After much toil, we've finally finished a website - no, a work of art. Everything runs perfectly - animations are smooth, the layout is robust, and everything looks polished, perfect... but then you open it in Edge. Your stomach drops - It looks awful.
How Cross-Site Scripting Attacks Hack Your Website
If you're a newbie when it comes to web development and security, it can be difficult to imagine exactly how a website gets hacked. When we create a website, it only runs the code we write - so how can someone use it to run code on someone else's machine?
How to write comments to improve code clarity
I'm not going to lie - I used to struggle writing comments. I have wasted hours writing comments that aren't helpful to anyone, while leaving out comments that have cost me hours of debugging time. As we learn to code, we get taught to write comments early. In FreeCodeCamp's curriculum,
Bad code isn't shameful
Let's be honest. We all write bad code. Sometimes, we write absolutely shocking code. In the programming community, we have an obsession with "good" code – and it's not difficult to see why. Good code is objectively better than bad code. It's faster, cleaner, more maintainable – Why would you settle for