Building a portfolio, what can I use?

General Web Dev
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I’m studying and building a portfolio for a future front-end web development job. I’m finding in my projects that I constantly have to research and lookup code. I understand the basic gist of the code I’m using, but I’m unable to produce the same code on my own.

So, is it acceptable to use code from research and other people’s help in your portfolio?

Thanks for your advice.

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Hi @bmcode,

Seems to me you are a bit early in the game. A portfolio “should” showcase work that YOU have done that YOU know how to do. When you get to the skill level for a “front-end web development job” you will know how to produce the code on your own. You will have to in order to pass any skills test a potential employer will give you before you get hired.

When doing individual contract jobs you can “fake it till you make it”. The client is not going to test your knowledge and probably doesn’t care “how” you get the job done (research, other peoples help) as long as you get the job done in a timely manner for the agreed upon fee. In this case, a portfolio with work you have done, even if hacked together from various resources would be OK, but I wouldn’t recommend using this one to get a job as an employee.

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What can I do at this point then?

I’m trying to complete projects on here: https://www.frontendmentor.io/ but I am finding I have to research a lot and ask for help.

I have done some courses in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

EDIT: Here is something I did on my own: https://codepen.io/bmcdesign/pen/gOaJLPY
It’s not a real portfolio, but a project I did.

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Keep learning. There is nothing wrong with researching and asking for help. It’s just not time to be concerned with a portfolio and getting hired as an employee is all. You can still work on your portfolio if you want. You can use it to implement things as you learn them if it is applicable.

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Are there projects I can do to learn? Something that is my skill level and won’t require me to ask others for help?

I don’t want to just watch more videos or read more books, but to actually put it in practice.

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One project I could suggest is an address book. It is a project that could be extremely simple and can scale to complex (advanced) as you learn more and more and can encompass every technology you would need to know.

If you haven’t got there yet, learn about version control (Git & Github). It is important and you will need to know it down the road.

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