Jeahn 📸 Photographer/Educator

One of the biggest problems in learning is unconscious incompetence. "I don't even know what I don't know." When you're a beginner, there are countless concepts and sub-skills that you don't even know exist. This is an area where Google is not always helpful – you have to know what to ask. But you don't. By contrast, this is where teachers shine – including tools like ChatGPT, which can act as teachers in a limited capacity. As I've learned to code over the past year, one of my favorite prompts goes like this: "Here's some code I wrote. How would a senior Javascript developer improve it?" By using prompts like this, I got introduced to a ton of advanced concepts that I wouldn't have known to look up on my own. Naturally, I implemented them in my code as well – which made my projects much more robust!

Many people think learning works like this: Learn and become ready → Do The way it actually works: Learn just enough to start → Do (badly) → Learn → Do (a little less badly) → Repeat You're never "ready", but you jump in anyway.