Stop Trying To Memorize Code - Do This Instead

if you're trying to learn code by memorizing then you are doomed to fail [Music] welcome back to web dev simplified my name is kyle and my job is to simplify the web for you so you can start building your dream project sooner so that sounds interesting make sure you subscribe to the channel for more videos just like this now like i mentioned memorization is a terrible technique when it comes to learning programming it's great if you need to learn history or if you need to learn other random facts but programming there's way way way too much to memorize i mean there are millions and millions of functions and methods and names of things to memorize so memorizing it all is obviously impossible instead what you need to do is focus on the concepts of programming because luckily in programming there's actually not that many main concepts you need to understand in javascript for example if you understand how setting variables works how objects work and how functions work along with the whole event loop you pretty much know 95 of what you need to know to write a program and that's a very small list of concepts that you need to understand but the hard part is that you kind of get lost in the weeds when trying to learn these concepts because when you try to learn about functions you learn about all these built-in functions like you know you got the split function the join function the document.queryselector query selector all there's tons and tons of functions that you could memorize but instead what you need to do is focus on how these functions work and the concept of function as a whole as opposed to individual functions because sure you're going to forget about query selector or query selector all you're going to forget that there's a join method on strings that's perfectly okay because when you get to the point where you need to do that where you say hey i really want to join an array on a comma how do i do that you google it and you're going to get a response that says hey use the join function so you don't need to memorize this join function because you can just look it up and eventually the functions and methods and things that you use the most often are just going to stick in your memory because you use them all the time the things that you don't use very often well you don't need to memorize them because you don't use them very often so you just look them up and use them when you need them that's the great thing about programming is that everything is documented incredibly well when it comes to history you need to do a lot of research to fact check things to make sure that different things are right or wrong and what one person says is right versus what other people say but with programming you can just look up the documentation for a language and it's going to be right 100 of the time so you can just say hey i'm going to mdn and i'm going to look up the split function for strings and there you go you can see exactly what it does because of this incredible ability to essentially look up anything that you want memorization is not really a skill that you need as a programmer and it's something that i see a lot of new programmers try to do and ultimately it just leads to failure because there's too much to memorize instead like i said focus on the concepts that's why in every single course that i teach instead of teaching you a bunch of different methods and things i instead focus on the concepts helping you learn the concepts of different things like arrays and objects and functions and so on in my javascript course and from that you can then extrapolate that knowledge to build anything that you want instead of just memorizing okay here's the split function this is what it does here's the join function here's what it does and so on instead you're going to be learning broader concepts and from those concepts you can tell yourself okay i know how functions work i want to try to do something with a function that does you know x y and z so you google is there a function in javascript that does x y and z if there's no results you build it yourself otherwise you use the one that's built in you know for example if you're like i want to select an object based on its data attribute in html well you can use a query selector or query selector all to do that but if you don't know they exist you're just going to google and find that information another reason that memorization is a bad idea is because memorization is really good when you need to learn a small subset of things let's say you have a collection of things that you need to memorize and you need to memorize them they never change they never get updated they're just always the same think about like some dates in history those are never going to change so you can memorize them pretty easily but with programming it's an ever evolving field things are always changing being added to and improved and on top of that the field is massive so there's way too many things to actually memorize the set is not small enough so instead what you need to do is stop memorizing and instead focus on constantly learning that's the one thing about programming that most people don't realize is that it's a field that you constantly are learning in you never get to a point where you're done learning because something is always going to be new that's coming out or there's always going to be new things you discover that have been around forever but you just never used before that's why programming is about how you can learn things so if you want to become a better programmer instead of memorizing more functions and more variables instead what you should do is focus on your skills of learning make yourself a better learner because as a programmer you're going to spend more time learning than anything else so if you can become a quicker and more efficient learner you're going to drastically increase the speed that you can become a programmer and learn new programming skills probably the best analogy for learning programming is actually learning math if you think about it when you were first learning about addition and subtraction and multiplication and division you did so with word problems whereas like you know sally had three apples gave one to john and now she has two left and that kind of taught you the concept of subtraction same thing with addition multiplication and so on there are different concepts you didn't memorize that three minus one is two maybe you have that memorized now because you use that all the time like two plus two is four everybody knows that from memory but if i asked you you know what is 47 times 38 you're going to have to go to the calculation to do that and that is like the concept that you understand you understand how multiplication works so you can calculate any number you want when you're learning math you don't memorize what every single combination of numbers is when you multiply them together instead you learn the concept it's the same thing with programming you don't memorize every single function and what they'll do instead you memorize the concepts and the functions you use the most often are just going to stick in your memory because you use them all the time so next time you're watching a video and trying to learn some programming don't focus on memorizing every function and variable they use and instead try to focus on the larger concepts that are going on inside of the code and speaking of projects you can find some of mine linked over here and subscribe to the channel for more videos just like this thank you very much for watching and have a good day

Channel: Web Dev Simplified

Views: 373,051

Rating: 4.9629803 out of 5

Keywords: webdevsimplified, how to memorize code, how to memorize, how to memorize programming, how to remember code, how to remember programming, programming memorization, programming memory, code memory

Id: vP2MNhC_Igw

Length: 5min 52sec (352 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 26 2021