Why do you need this?

Introduction:

Why use LPR when there are online resources?

LPR doesn't state to have anything extra ordinarily different, nor better, than what might be available out there. In fact, the other resources provides links to some of the best freely available resources out there which provide more comprehensive and detailed information for all of the topics found here.

What is LPR and what does it offer?

LPR is simply a learning resource which, alongside providing a intro to basic web development topics, ensures that same knowledge and skills are retained to a degree that will enable easier and far more rapid transition to and acquisition of more advanced topics and technologies. Far too many resources, whether available online or through colleges or other physical traditional methods, seek to disseminate knowledge by simply reciting topics at a very superficial level with very little to no real world practical usage. Apart from this issue is the glaring omission of practice - it may be alluded to and suggested but no systemised or structured methodology presented nor expected to be completed to fulfil any learning requirements. In almost any typical learning methodolgy the only goal is to simply present information, follow a simple tutorial, build something and a test or exam. In one end, out the other.

How to truly learn, limitations of tutorials & tutorial hell

True learning takes place where concepts are first observed, and then reviewed at spaced intervals. Professor Barbara Oakley refers to areas of the memory, the short term memory which can only hold a certain amount for a short period of time. And the long term, which hold much much more knowledge and for longer periods of time. The trick is to transfer information from the short term to the long term, which not only has deeper states of storage, but allows for quicker access and more advanced means of manipulating that information to gain more and better insights. It is this area, the long term memory, which pertains to true learning, anything that persists in the short term memory gives an "illusion of learning." You may have experienced this, especially while following tutorials, coding along, understanding everyhing, but at the end feeling like you don't remember much of what you seen nor done. This has happened on me on several, if not all, of the courses I've ever done. Apart from having spent all that time and not having gained much, is the fact that now you will feel demotivated and not progress any further as trying anything else of a higher level will surely require fundamental knowledge of the topics. If you do decide to take another course, it might be another language or topic altogther, or probably the same but most definitely something that is at a beginner level. So you will be stuck in a constant loop of watching and idly consuming tutorials and forever being stuck in a tutorial hell of watching the same types of topics You can get more information on the site for "Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects," which offers an indepth course on how the memory works and how best to learn.

Imagine these scenarios:

#1
You want to learn web development, so you decided to start with HTML and you found a tutorial online after some searching and or friends recommending it to you. You find that the course is easy to get into, engaging, and showing you very cool and useful information. You might be following along with a demo project of a vacation rental site.

Everything is going well, you're building a fancy looking site along with learning HTML, CSS and maybe even a bit of JavaScript. You can't wait to finish up and learn more, heck even build your own.

Finally you finish up and decide you want to start that site you always wanted to. Even if you aren't good at designing a site, at least now you know the basic foundation of building a site, so you just decide to start. You start building it and realise you most likely don't even remember how to start the first few tags. That's ok, most people look up things every now and then. It's common, plus you are a beginner. Ok now you've taken a look at what you did and with some effort managed to setup a basic page.

You keep building but suddenly realise that more and more pieces needed to build the site are missing from your grasp. You have to constantly keep referring to the tutorial video/code to see what you are doing. Worse still you don't really have a proper grasp some of the things that you were doing, or that you want to attempt to do.

It just seems like you are rebuilding the same site you did in the tutorial. But this time it feels less exciting and it's not easy to come up with the content or design when you are struggling to even just put together the structure.

#2
You finally completed a tutorial or two and maybe even attempted to build your own site. Things are going good, but you realise that what you know is barely scratching the surface and to really get that job or more clients you need to know a few tricks of the trade as well as some sought after skills and web development stack.

So you start looking up the latest and most sought after stacks - angular, react, vue etcetera. After filling through the ranks you find a decent enough tutorial, seems legit, lots of fancy marketing material which seems convincing; or you go straight to the documentation. Atta boy, you ain't no Doom Guy in a baby bib that's for certain. [get Doom guy sprite and link to Doom?]

Now you start the tutorial, things are explained clearly, set up was tricky but was walked through with only a few minor hiccups. You can understand and do most of it not all that is explained. There's some setup and environment details that you are not familiar with but you can surely learn that later as it seems like what is done in the industry.

Slowly you start moving along. The code, topics and explanation seems a bit harder now. It's not easy to follow with so many things that you aren't sure about or heard of before. The instructor is going at what seems a normal pace but seems inhuman to you. Explaining and type away as they do, switching between the editor and demo. It's hard to keep up, so you pause and painstakingly try to match what is going on. But are you getting anything? Will you be able to follow along let alone grasp what is being done?

In both cases, the first where you assumed you grasped everything and the second where you were fairly certain you weren't grasping everything, chances are you very highly likely weren't grasping much - unless if you have a natural propensity just to see or hear something once and absorb it. But that's not the case for most of us.

What happens is you get a false sense of learning when you follow along with tutorials, or feel overwhelmed and manage to preserver until you can't anymore and give up.

There could be a host of issues, but the key one is that you didn't have at hand an instant set of knowledge nor the ability to know and use it in a meaningful, proper way. Without a solid foundation in the basics you won't be able to create a rudimentary project, let alone be able to learn more advanced topics or complext subjects and systems which require a solid foundation.

When you learn the alphabet, you, nor the person teaching you, never expected to just go through each letter, copy one or two sentences a few words long and then expect to write an essay or a short novel. You wouldn't even be able to write a few well thought out sentences let along a paragraph.

Yet when it comes to the glut of web development or programming tutorials, there is the implicit imperative that you will be shown the basics once. Steadily progress to higher topics right away, build something along the way and at the end consider that knowledge imparted.

There are always adages rampant about how many hours it takes to master something. Which almost anyone whose worked in the industry will tell you. But that guidance seems to be simple rhetoric and misplaced. Even the professionals and instructors seem to have forgotten how, when and why they practice so won't even know what to tell you or even care. And even if they do have some inkling to expound this cliche, it is never where it might be needed the most - the foundation; the basics.

It can be somewhat foolhardy to practice the higher level concepts without practicing the understanding the basics. Practice not only hardwires the skills needed to attain fluency, but also the capacity to spontaneously create things from scratch. Through practice one will be exposed to not only the nuances and deeper meaning of coding, but the gotchas and also develop a personal set of tips & tricks to work smarter and faster.

There seems to be a milieu of taking short cuts to gain entry into the field or that tech evolves at a rapid pace so quick learning and side stepping of some areas is required. But that misses the point entirely. The rapidity that is needed to learn a new stack or language has to come after a strong foundation in the prerequisites and required practice put in.

Enter LPR

These are just some typical scenarious with extraneous detailing provided. There could be many variations or even much simpler cases where learning is overlooked and takes a backseat to hours of seat on the chair, attendance, credits, accolades etcetera. That is where LPR comes in, not really to address the aforementioned issues apart from that they persist, but instead to provide the vital and oft missing essence of practice which will underpin the success in later stages and also aid in acquiring new skills and techniques faster