My earlier experiences with trying to code was pretty abysmal. I actually went through a lot of weird phases. That's no exxageration. It was exactly like this. I would try to follow one tutorial or the other and then go and try to replicate it to see how the code would work, by following along. It gave a bit of dopamine hits but the learning was very slow going that way, almost next to nothing. I wasn't to know this of course at the very beginning, knowing nothing about the task at hand, thinking that it's just HTML, CSS and then vanilla JavaScript that I have to learn before I can go ahead and call myself a web developer.
Then followed a period of inaction and falling motivation. I would work with something and then leave it before I can get familiar with the technology. Therefore my appreciation for the topics was not overwhelming. And it left me in a bad state. Often, I would feel tired just thinking about opening my laptop. Something bigger was the problem here and I couldn't figure out what. There was no one to act as a constant guide which left me in a very bad place. I wasted so much time thinking that I will master something in a matter of days.
But now there is a change with the realization that learning about technology and for me web development specifically will never come in a matter of days. It will be accumulated over a longer period of time, seeping like rainwater into the hard summer soil. So I starting with getting better at just JavaScript after spreading myself all over at languages like C, Rust and Go. Honestly, didn't do much with them apart from getting the setup ready and writing the usual Hello World program. But even that would count as getting started as my feet got wet at least in those settings.
But doing this due dilegence meant that I was not in shallow waters anymore. I was at least now able to figure out how to move ahead and was better at strategizing my priorities. So what followed was a period of renaissance where my days became more productive and I slowly reached a place where learning became fun and less of a chore. There is a lot to talk about the my mental attitude when I figured out a bit about the above mentioned languages. Those days were filled with a crazy energy and a lot of unwanted ignorance about the enormity of task at hand. And as soon as I realised that I was bound to give up. Anyone experienced in the field would have guessed that very early had they seen me at work.
But still I thank those days. Because they made me realise the true value of learning and guided me towards the attitude which I should possess when setting learning goals and going ahead to implement those goals. What happened was going ahead with the traditional long videos that promise to give a basic understanding of the language in 10-20 hours. But very quickly I resorted to papers and documentation with guidance from other Youtubers who told enough to make me certain that I was indeed again going to succumb to Tutorial Hell if I went on with my current approach. So I resorted from taking giant undertakings and resorted to getting immediately on the act.
I quickly completed the setups and started to code in those languages. This provided exposure and also gave me an insight about the road and challenges ahead. This opened my eyes. And after a frantic couple of months I decided that I must master one language first and that would be JavaScript. This came with another realization. This was the thing about writing code is a difficult task and takes time. The more time I will spend writing code the better my code will be. It works simply like this. There is no magic about the process. The output is simply an effect of the efforts we put into the activity.