Why do I not remember going over concatenation?

Yes, you might want to if you are confused. In JavaScript you use a "+", in php it is "."

I can see what you mean. I would suggest going completely through the Javascript track first. The Javascript track is much more thorough and there are enough similarities that it really helps me.

Yes this is the second time that there is a video missing.

I feel confused about the PHP track in general. It's like I'm missing a ton of information. It goes from How to Build a Website (or something similar) to jumping right into datatypes and functions. There was no intro to the topic. It's too advanced even at the beginner level. Did I miss something?

In my opinion, learning programming is not a hard task..its really understanding how to put it altogether once you have the knowledge, it's very easy to forget most of what you just learned.

The Solution: Think back to grade school, when you are being taught about your native language, how are you taught and how do you end up remembering the vast majority of definitions for words, Do you actually know every definition to every word, or remember the correct grammar ("syntax" ) for writing sentences. Programming is very much the same in this aspect, it was designed to try to be as close as possible to learning a new language, so its easier for people to learn.

In this example, he clearly didn't teach us about concatenation, but instead of being confused try to think of it using the same common sense you would if someone used that word, forget the symbol and forget what it is trying to do and instead think of how you would solve this problem in your own native language.

IF someone used the word concatenation and I had no idea what it means, I would most likely google or grab a dictionary and look up what that word means. A quick google search tells me that concatenation is: "the action of linking things together in a series.", without knowing anything of the programming language I can now assume that oh it means to link things together, in this scenario we are linking variables together.

He explains how to concatenate in this video in a very subtle manner, shows you syntax on how its used, so by only looking up the definition in my native language I now know what this is and how it works, If I want more in-depth knowledge on the topic I will look up "PHP Concatenation" and find the documentation and read about it, otherwise I now know enough to continue on without being confused.

By the way I'm by no means an expert, I have less than a month worth of programming experience, my mindset is just programmed to think of everything logically and by using common sense, makes programming easier for me to understand I guess. Also if you can relate something in programming to something else that makes more sense to you, you will have a much better time retaining what you are learning.

Best mentality to have in this field is "Use it, or Lose it" if you are just following along with these videos and copying/pasting code without doing anything yourself, you will in fact just be wasting your time. why do you think you had to print words over and over and over and over until you hated it in school. "Because if you are using it everyday, chances are you will remember it indefinitely".

I took JavaScript first, or I would be very frustrated right now. Yes things are skipped over in the videos. Not just these videos: jQuery, node.js basics also. I think they must update them or edit them and figure we'll just hack it together or something.