#2 How Does a Non-Developer Learn to Write Developer Documentation? Let’s Find Out! (Mnemonics and JavaScript)
I‘m a copywriter who writes content for the general public, but I want to become a technical writer who writes documentation specifically for software developers. This is my educational journey…
As you read in Post #1 of this series, JavaScript: First Thoughts, I have taken it upon myself to teach myself JavaScript. At the time of writing this, I have completed 58 of the Javascript lessons on FreeCode Camp.
While the first 40 exercises went pretty well, I’m finding the lessons to become more and more difficult. I am realizing that I can no longer just push-on. If I did, I would find myself simply trying to mimic the code that I see in order to progress. However, I do not want that; I want to understand this programming language when I see it. That means I’m going to need to break out my secret academic weapon…
Mnemonics and the Math Monster
I have struggled with math my entire life. Despite achieving good grades in every other subject, math, through tutors and teachers both good and bad, has always been something that made me feel inadequate.
No matter what, I could not seem to memorize formulas, and I couldn’t remember the sequences in which I was supposed to do things in order to solve problems.
I later learned that I might have a form of dyslexia called dyscalculia that affects comprehension of things that have arbitrary sequences, like formulas, and numerical information.
For example, I still find it a little difficult to read an analog clock. It can take me over 15 seconds just to figure out the time from one. No matter how many times I read it, I temporarily forget what the hands represent, what the positions on the clock represent, which way it’s ticking, and I often have to slowly count from the 15, 30, and 45 mark (once I remember them) and match them up with the correct hand.
People without dyscalculia often take the fact that they have internalized this kind of information for granted.
Furthermore, getting good at math seemed completely out of reach for me.
However, that all changed one day in my late teens, when in a quaint little thrift store in my home town, I stumbled across a book-on-tape that promised me the ability to develop memory super-powers. I bought it. Listened to it, and luckily for me, it wasn’t lying. It worked.
The book was all about methods for creating mnemonics (i.e., memory aides/devices).
Math Zero to Math Hero
I took the lessons I learned from the book, and I applied them to my college math courses. It was nothing less than an epiphany. I went on from C’s in math in high school to get A’s in all of my college math courses. Of course, taking the time and effort to create mnemonics was time consuming, but it was well worth it.
Now JavaScript is Starting to Get Me Down
So, now I’m studying, not math, but a programming language, JavaScript, and I am am running into all the old familiar problems. Be sure to check out my next post in this series to see my attempts to use mnemonics to understand and read JavaScript code.
It will include JS terms and concepts that I have yet to commit to memory such as functions(push( ), pop( ), shift( ), unshift( )), bracket notation, access and modify array data, scope, global vs. local variables, passing values into functions, take a return value of a function and assign it to a variable, and lastly, I might try to create a mnemonic to help me visualize a complicated function so that I can always remember it as an example, etc.
I will be using some of the methods detailed on this webpage, ‘9 Types of Mnemonics for Better Memory’.
Why am I Learning Javascript?
While, I no longer have to do much math in my adult life, I am fiercely interested in technology. I read tech news every day, and I am in love with websites, start-ups, applications, crowdsourcing platforms, virtual reality, computational linguistics, AI, and a lot of other things that rely on software development to exist.
While it’s nice writing about these things as a copywriter in blogs and in whitepapers, I have a strong interest in getting to know them even better. I want to become literate one or more programming languages so that I can go from writing about these technologies to writing about how to use them for software developers. I want to become a API writer/Technical writer in software development.
Stay tuned for post number 3 where I will create mnemonics to help me inculcate more JavaScript/programming concepts into my stubborn skull…
Have experience with struggling to learn to code? Feel free to leave a comment to share any tips or tricks you found useful.
