Six Steps to Go From Watching Tutorials to Actually Building Projects
Reading
Madison Kanna started a great thread on Twitter. Check out her suggestions and some resources I pulled from it in the thread:
When you're learning to code, people say "Stop the tutorials, just go build stuff!" But... how?! For a beginner, this is daunting. Thread on what helped me go from watching tutorials to actually building projects.
Add new features to your tutorial apps. Take the app you've built in your tutorial and come up with one small feature you can add to that app. Then build it on your own. You'll start building, but in a way that is doable and not so overwhelming that you give up.
Build with a friend or group. When you start a project alone, it's easy to give up when you feel lost and unsure of what to do next. With a friend or group, you can figure it out & help each other get unstuck. We're working on creating groups to do this in the @codebookclub.
Build small projects first, then bigger ones later. Start off by building a small idea. Your MVP. Then continue to add little features to your project. It might seem small or boring to build so small, but this is how big projects are created: one small step at a time.
Read and understand someone else's project, then try to rebuild it. Read through a project you love. Write down how the app is working. Then try to create it. Refer back to it if needed. You'll have a basic template to get going with.
Use @codepen or @codesandbox to start off. Starting your own project can be overwhelming because of so many tasks you have to do to even get it live. Using one or both is a good way to quickly get your project up and running and sharable.
Starting a coding project can be like standing at the foot of a mountain, paralyzed as you look up at how far you have to go to reach the summit. You give up before you start. So don't focus on the summit focus on your next step. The next small bit of code.