2+ years and still can't make a simple nav bar

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Whatever801@reddit

Don't beat yourself up about it. You're very young and you should expect to struggle with these things. If it were easy everyone would do it. My 2 cents: don't do an about me site, especially from scratch. I think I tried once and got frustrated and gave up. You really won't gain anything from doing it anyways. In the real world people would just use squarespace or some template. Just torture for the sake of torture IMO. If you wanna learn web-dev make a React app and use a component library. That's what people are actually doing in the industry and you'll learn all kinds of fun stuff and it won't be frustrating.

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mikgrogreen@reddit

This is absolutely horrible advice for a beginner. You don't start with React.

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PersonalCricket7174@reddit (OP)

I'm just starting out with React, *hopefully* it is not gonna be a pain in the ass.
Other than that, thank You for advice.

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Whatever801@reddit

It's not. React is the best thing that ever happened to frontend. Everyone was actually willing to migrate their massive legacy disgusting jQuery apps to react if that's any indication. Use this https://vite.dev/guide/

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InvaderToast348@reddit

My opinion, for whatever it's worth

It's important to mention they should be confident with vanilla js as well though. It's better to learn the language itself, then look at tooling and extras once your comfortable writing a program in the base language.

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jhax13@reddit

React is the only frontend code i willingly work with personally.

I'm not a frontend engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but I have to put dashboards and interfaces together all the time and I usually throw some simple components together and then tailwind it and call it a day.

React makes sense intuitively to me, it's actually kind of fun to play with once you get the hang of it

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Sea_Point1055@reddit

I started learning web dev few months ago. I began by dabbling in front-end from Odin Project. Then I moved onto Frontend Mentor which has dramatically improved my frontend skills. They give you the resources to learn what you need to know and then give you a project that you need to build using the skills you just learned.

What helped with Frontend Mentor was that I did not have to design things myself (like Navbars), instead you're given a Figma file and you build the design into functional frontend components. This way, you don't have to stress about the creative aspect of design - and you're also simulating how some workplaces work - where as a frontend engineer you have to work off a the designer's ideas. I recommend trying that.

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mitomiker@reddit

We all feel the same. Stay calm.

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InfinityBowman@reddit

my buddy is graduating with me in cs this year and he definitely cant make a navbar probably even with ai, so dw

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InfinityBowman@reddit

my buddy is graduating with me in cs this year and he definitely cant make a navbar probably even with ai, so dw

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bravopapa99@reddit

STOP USING AI. *NOW*

How the hell can you expect to tell the difference between factually correct instructions and AI generated nonsense if you yourself don't understand what is going on?

There is NO FAST WAY IN to this game, it's personal effort, personal learning, personal mistakes, personal progress.

AI is a toxic mess for beginners. Just read around Reddit for example.

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PersonalCricket7174@reddit (OP)

As I said, I try to rely on AI as least as possible, I know that it can push bad quality code, this is why I try to do things myself

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bravopapa99@reddit

Good! Flex-box is full of surprise, getting a clear distinction of the terminology helps!

Keep up the good work, trust your own brain!

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NoYogurt8022@reddit

how are u learning? taking a look at material and tutorials? if no then do that. if yes then also start working on projects, sonething usefull in a web app u maybe need or a portfolio website or a website that just looks nice. try to actually use what u learn and if u dont know anything then just google it

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MonochromeDinosaur@reddit

Just go on MDN and look at the HTML and CSS docs when you get stuck.

Solving problems is programming, you currently have a problem go solve it.

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PureTruther@reddit

Imposter syndrome would be like someone creates fully responsive, highly structured complex af navbar and says, "I cannot even change its color due to V8 engine" 🤣

Imposter syndrome is not wide.

You're just a beginner. Start with a bar, and add some anchor elements. Do not overthink at first.

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blind-octopus@reddit

Okay. Breathe.

Let make a nav bar. Try it today

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TheAmazingHammerDuck@reddit

It's normal. CSS sucks. It's rules are arbitrary as fuck. The whole html way of building web is a dumb legacy shit we're never getting rid of.

Anyway, I think it took me a like decade or so to get comfortable with it (I did other stuff apart from CSS tho). Some things click slower for some people. You'll be fine.

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_BeeSnack_@reddit

You can copy it from W3S....

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FlareGER@reddit

Basic CSS IS painful. There is a shit ton of expectations like responsiveness across different devices and screen sizes whereas what you want to do is just visualy highlight a freaking button and move on.

If you want to eventualy work heavily with design, eg actualy designing presentational webpages, then yes, there is no way around but to eventualy master this and get a handful of assisting tools and replace as much as possible with csv.

If on the other hand you want to focus more on the technical part and develop web applications instead then, in most cases, you're good if you understand the basics and let some framework take over that part of the implementation.

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sessamekesh@reddit

Ha, navbar is one of those sounds easy, is hard things. I've been working as a frontend developer for over a decade, with five of those years at Google, and still have to scratch my head and look up a bunch of reference for a proper nav bar.

There be dragons in CSS, I'm on a team of phenomenal professionals at an industry leading design tool company right now and good CSS is still an issue we face.

We're all out here just doing our best, passion and hunger to learn beat out talent in the long run.

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Evelittlewitch@reddit

Exactly. I’ve been working for 3 years and still cannot do a proper nav bar. The latest problema that I have is that the floating content opening from the nav bar doesn’t close properly if the navigation happens with only a query parameter changed.

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AncientView0@reddit

No such thing as 2nd year CS HS for the standard job progression bro. You’re a high schooler, you’re like a -1st year, don’t stress so badly, you’re ahead, just keep learning, it’s not supposed to be easy

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Reasonable-Moose9882@reddit

Stop using AI. Learn absolute basics of HTML and CSS.

You can use Udemy: Understanding HTML and CSS (2025 Edition) by Anthony Alicea, and also read MDN Web Docs. Follow Kevin Powell and Traversy Media on Youtube.

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So_Dev@reddit

Bro. This is a field that grown adults with 10x your experience get geuine imposter syndrome in.

Like the top comment said. Try to enjoy learning it while you can instead of feeling like you have to hit some imaginary threshold. Do you know many other 17yo who can even explain code to the degree can? No probably not.

They exist sure. But that doesn't make what you know worth any less.

You got this.✌️💪

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curiousomeone@reddit

I'm sorry but there's something wrong with your lessons if you had two years and still can't make a simple nav bar.

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SalchichaSexy@reddit

Bro, you're 16

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CryptoTipToe71@reddit

You know what imposter syndrome is? The first steps of learning. Nobody knows how to do anything right away. Do you think people with 20 years of experience just know how to do everything? No they still have to Google questions, read documentation, post question and find answers. That never changes. Your questions just become (generally) less basic the more experience you get.

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EyesOfTheConcord@reddit

Try supplementing your learning with The Odin Project, you’ll be an expert at Nav Bars before you’re even done the introduction.

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PersonalCricket7174@reddit (OP)

seems interesting, will check it out.

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UnemployedAtype@reddit

Music, writing, sports, art, and many many other places in life, people learn how to do something by copying or reproducing the work of other greats in those fields. Someone who is classically trained has studied and learned from classical literature.

If you don't want to go through a step-by-step learning process, then just look at how other people do NAV bars. Understand that you might learn bad programming conventions from doing it this way. but you also need to know that unless you go off of a dedicated coding convention guide different people's guides will have different ways of coding and commenting.

these are actually two approaches that you can take either a bottom up approach (learning step by step from a professional course) or a top down approach (looking at what other people did and figuring out how to reproduce it and understanding how it works).

I would recommend figuring out which learning style suits you best.

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MessyAngelo@reddit

Second, this. TheOdinproject.com is a great place for beginners trying to learn. It's free also.

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tengoCojonesDeAcero@reddit

Third, it really is an exceptional course. After finishing about 70% of it, most of my web dev classes were a joke.

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MrShad0wzz@reddit

Have you heard of bootstrap css?

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PersonalCricket7174@reddit (OP)

A few times, haven't really went deep into the rabbit hole though, is it any good?

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MrShad0wzz@reddit

It’s very good. takes away the stress of trying to manually build things like nav bars, modals, progress bars etc.

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notislant@reddit

Are you doing the odin project? It really holds your hand. If youve been using ai to spit stuff out that could be a major part of your problem.

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pornthrowaway42069l@reddit

Bro

I deliever UI to clients that made ME cringe, from perspective of how it works code wise. My manager? Happy. My Director? Happy. Client? Happy. I'm fucking furious coz I know I could have done better.

Welcome to dev club bruhanski

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Kevanoovitch@reddit

Christ I feel old saying this but you are way to young to worry about it. Like me saying it won’t stop it but with perspective you’ll realize I’m right. I was the same after I finished my highschool which was CS oriented. I wasn’t particularly good at programming so I decided to take couple gap years. It was real hard for me to see my friends go to uni while me always seeing myself as the computer nerd struggle with programming. I took a couple gap years and worked as a system administrator for a couple years and found my love for computers in networking. Now I’m at uni and found a new passion for programming and back-end development. My friends and I look back at our high school projects and laugh at how terrible they are and we realize how much we’ve learnt and can’t even fathom how we struggled with it then. And my friends in comparison to me are not students but developers/SW-engineers. I feel that with school it’s so easy to compare yourself with others and in cs/programming there will always be someone better. But to realize that it’s just an intrusive bad thought and keep soldiering on most hurdles will me manageable in the long term.

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Naetharu@reddit

Something is wrong if you’re taking two years to learn to make a nav bar. I assume that ‘two years’ measures the time since you first tried, not a period of actually constant study and effort. If you put your mind to it then learning the basics is very simple, and you should be able to go from totally new to being able to make a page with a nav and footer in a couple of days at most.

My suggestion is to sit down, write down what you are trying to do, and then as you go break that down into smaller tasks that you can go and figure out. For layouts you really just need to learn Flex and Grid in modern CSS. And even then you can get away with just Flex to start with. So maybe have a look at that, and then revisit your page and see how it goes.

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orion__quest@reddit

Get off Ai, that is just a crutch, you are not doing yourself any favours there.

Speak with a teacher to see if they can guide you better, and make this click. If not then find a tutorial on creating a nav bar, either in written form or video format. Maybe the method of how you are learning is holding you back as we all absorb information differently. Also take breaks.

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tengoCojonesDeAcero@reddit

Don't worry and keep learning the basics.

The best way to learn CSS is to find a website you like, right click on some button or text you like, and click "Inspect". You'll see the HTML and the CSS. Try turning off some CSS rules and see how an element changes.

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kevinossia@reddit

You don't have imposter syndrome. You are an imposter. You're a teenager in school.

Relax, keep learning, and don't overthink it.

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PersonalCricket7174@reddit (OP)

Maybe you're right. My parents are supportive of my career, I did talk to them about my problem and they also said something like you - that I'm just starting out.

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VokN@reddit

Give it another 10 years then you can feel like an imposter who hasn’t progressed at all, there’s a reason degrees exist in the 18-21 age bracket rather than 15-18

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computang@reddit

Sounds like you have good parents. They are right, you’re just early on! Keep putting in and you’ll keep getting more out of it.

CSS sucks. I’m a CTO, coming from a Senior SWE background and I still hate CSS. Managing stylesheets is a pain. All of our web apps use Tailwind which makes it so much easier to maintain but it is good to start with just CSS to understand it better.

Keep up the good work! Getting started at your age is going to put you way ahead of most CS college majors that never even build apps until they’re out of college.

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ColoRadBro69@reddit

You're not career ready because you're still learning. An imposter is someone who never bothered to learn. You'll be able to make a nav bar in time, you just need to pick more skills up first - which you're doing.

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geheimeschildpad@reddit

Just as a thought, if you’re interested in computer science why not try a backend language? I’ve been an engineer working predominantly in web development for 10 years and I still can’t get my head around CSS, my brain just isn’t wired that way. But give me C#, C++ or Golang and it just clicks immediately.

But to echo everybody else; you are only 17. Stop using AI because it doesn’t seem like it’s helping you and just keep at it!!!

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writingtosimon@reddit

Disregarding your age. Making a “basic” nav is simple, but I’m guessing you want nav grouping, nice burger menu, maybe search and etc? And that takes a bunch of skill, practice & there is a 100+ ways of “doing it right”. My advice, dont look at the best of the best nav bars or other designs - youll get there eventually. Create something simple, then iterrate. I noticed I always get into these slumps when I try to achieve someting too big like Notion like datatable functions with CRUD operations, I stop there and just say to myself - “I just need a table for now” and move on from there.

In any case - good luck on your journey. Make something simple but functional!

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_Tono@reddit

You’re 17 dawg, chill out. Doing pure CSS drawings helped me out a good bit with structure stuff, you could give it a go

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wannacommissionameme@reddit

1) just google/youtube stuff and learn how to do it??

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+make+a+navbar

2) making navbars and coding simple shit is not computer science.

your focus is to do the simple stuff as well as you can. go ahead and cheat with AI or copy + paste code the first time, go through the code and make small edits to change functionality to learn how the parts fit together, and then keep rebuilding it from scratch until you don't need the assistance anymore.

you're just learning. it's supposed to be slow, it's supposed to take you a long time, and it's supposed to be difficult.

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hitanthrope@reddit

This honestly sounds like it might be a bit of a "learning how to learn" problem. You're still young, as many others have said, but if you have been working on this for 2 years, you probably are right to be a little frustrated at your progress.... but... it's fine. Certainly no need to freak out. It never helped anyone, so never mind the syndromes and such.

Let's focus on this nav bar problem. There must be examples in the thousand online. In fact, many millions on the basis that you can look at the code of any site you like, but probably best to focus on those intended to be examples...

Copy it, and study it. Take the example, put some of your own content in it, play with the CSS, perhaps in your browser dev console, to understand what all the bits do and how things change if you change their values. Just tinker with stuff.

There isn't really a lot of problem using AI as long as you get used to wanting to understand how things actually work. These days you can probably even have the AI explain it to you.

Look up "flexbox froggy" and "css grid garden", which are two fun little educational games that teach two major tools in moden web layout, but other than this, just play around with examples. It will all make sense soon enough.

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Beregolas@reddit

My dude, you are 16. at that age I was struggling to write a calculator in C. You have barely learnt anything about programming yet. It’s a science, a craft and an art form. Maybe just take a break and revisit the project (or a new project) in a month or two. Give your brain time to settle what you’ve already learned and don’t stress about it.

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kschang@reddit

Learn Bootstrap, and stop worrying about it.

https://getbootstrap.com/

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SwashbucklinChef@reddit

All things come with time and practice.

Come up with a new project idea outside of a "About Me" page (try something new!) and work it piece by piece. It'll help if the project is centered around a hobby or something you're passionate about as that'll keep your morale and interest up. When I was still starting out I made a page dedicated to the Godfather and another about a video game series I liked.

"Oh the Godfather is based off a book, I should have a section about the books. I should find an interesting way to display that. Oh cool here's some Javascript that allows me to render my devs as pages in a book and clicking let's me flip through it!"

Good luck and stick with it! Imposter syndrome never leaves you so just stay humble and willing to learn.