Right now I understand everything Rick taught me, and I could answer all the challenges.
I understand all the theory and how the code works, but when I want to make something I was taught so far on my own, I have no idea how to put that theory into code.
Is that normal? Because so far I feel like if I want to code I have to go back to a specific lecture and copy or use the code as a reference for myself which is clearly not okay to do… Rick said at the beginning of the course that I shouldn’t worry all that much about that kind of thing and everything will come together. But for me it feels like everything I learnt so far is just piling up in my mind and I have no idea how to put that into my own projects without going back to a specific lecture to see how Rick did it.
I am a complete beginner but from my perspective it is totally normal and fine to use the instructor’s code after you have completed lessons. I think if you can persevere with that approach you will learn what to do from your own initiative after a while and this is probably the best way to go about it. I will be using a similar approach.
Hi Nikolas,
Yes, that’s absolutely normal. Have you ever learnt another language? If so, you know that you have to look up stuff all the time when you are a beginner. However, at some point, you are suddenly able to express your own ideas in that foreign language.
The same happens when you learn something else. The brains of most people filter information. Their brains are lazy. They learn only things they consider as useful. Your brain won’t listen to you. It has its own opinion about usefulness. When you look up things a couple of times or repeat things a lot of times, your lazy brain will start remembering things because looking them up consumes more energy than remembering. And that’s how learning works.
The first few steps when developing your own games will be the hardest because this will be the first time no instructor tells you what to do. Once you accomplished them, the rest will be much easier. You will also notice that you are developing your own way of thinking while solving the problems of your game.
At the moment, you are following a tutorial. Rick tells you what to think and how to think. He can teach his way of thinking only. If you cannot fully reproduce it, that’s fine because you probably need only a part of it for your own project. Instead, try to understand his ideas and learn where to look up information. Learn how to organise your thoughts and how to break down a big task into little tasks.
Once you have basic knowledge, a good understanding and concepts, learning new things will become much easier because our brains like to organise and categorise information. As a beginner, you don’t have any basic knowledge yet, so the brain does not know what to do with the information, and the default solution is forgetting.
Long story short, don’t get discouraged by forgetting things. Look up the information you need like everybody else does. Keep working on your project even if it’s sometimes fairly exhausting. 
Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one. Makes me feel a whole lot better. That means there’s hope for me too. I have tried a couple of times to try to create something on own just to see how much I am remembering but, as of right now, now nearly enough to create a game from scratch. But, I do find myself remembering certain aspects and hearing Rick’s voice saying something that sticks in my head (like when he talks about functions or methods).
Thanks for that good advice, Nina.
Yup completely normal in the beginning. Overtime you will get better at doing certain things and they will become second nature. Then you’ll start to think of features you want to create and instead of seeing this big thing you’ll look at it and be able to break it down into a number of smaller components that can be tackled separately.
All of that just takes time and persistence.
Cheers,
Todd