Feb 4
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Why do JavaScript and React tutorials feel so confusing for so many beginners — even after weeks or months of effort? This is a video I wish I had watched while trying to “master” fundamentals before feeling allowed to build anything real. When I started learning to code, the problem wasn’t motivation or discipline. It was orientation. There were strong opinions everywhere: what language to start with, what stack was “correct,” and how much you needed to know before building your first app. In this video, I talk about: why learning JavaScript or React in isolation didn’t help me how abstractions made sense only after seeing a full system work common tutorial patterns that increased confusion instead of clarity and the small subset of JavaScript and React that actually carried most of my early progress This isn’t a guide, a roadmap, or a promise of faster results. It’s an observation from lived experience — what reduced cognitive overload and helped me develop a usable mental model of full-stack applications. If you’re learning JavaScript and React and feel like you’re doing a lot of work without things “clicking,” this perspective might resonate. Sometimes progress isn’t about learning more. It’s about learning less — at the right time. Timestamps 00:00 - Introduction 00:24 - Making The Wrong First Move is Scary 00:45 - Not Feeling Good Enough To Begin Building 01:42 - JS And React Are NOT a Bad Place To Start 02:15 - Fullstack App Structure That Made Sense To Me 03:27 - A Possible Problem With Tutorial Narrative 04:06 - Trap 1: Excessive JS Fundamentals 04:54 - Trap 2: Needing to Become React Expert 05:51 - Trap 3: Tutorials That Write and Delete Code 06:48 - The Actual JS And React Concepts That Helped Me