Have I just wasted my time?

Question

I have spent more than twenty days learning SVG, I learned how to make all different kind of shapes, how to edit the stroke of the shapes by using all these different stroke attributes, how to make all these weird curves and arcs using paths, how to use transform attribute, to scale, translate, rotate, skew, or do all of them together with matrix, how to make text, how to edit the text using all these different kind of text attributes that exist, how does viewBox and preserveAspectRadio work, how to group element, how to reuse elements, how to store elements, how to make symbols, how to use Gradient elements, how to animate using animateMotion, animate, animateTransform and set elements, all the different animate attributes like Calcmode, keySplines, KeyTimes and others, how to use effects, how to use patterns. All these took a lot of time, maybe I should had just learned to use an SVG editor from the beginning, it would have been way easier and faster, I didn't know this would take that long when I started.

Answer 1

I don't think any kind of learning ever is a waste. I watched a few tutorials on youtube that taught me drawing svg with a vector drawing tool and then animating it with CSS. I agree that drawing SVG with a vector tool might be much easier but that doesn't give me a good control over how I can manipulate those SVGs as I lack the proper knowledge.
Now that you have a deep knowledge of SVG and how you can manipulate those, you can do much better when you use it along with a vector tool.

Answer 2

No you didn't
To this day I still suck at either SVG or canvas drawing.
If you got that far you doing okay

Answer 3

No you haven't that's useful knowledge and good application of your time, in this field the more your probe into a topic the better you intend and in my opinion you've given a rough overview of SVG

Answer 4

Obviously you have not, if you told me you spent the last twenty days playing roblox I would agree that you have wasted your time, but you can't say you have wasted your time after learning all these stuff. I checked your notes page, and the ammount of informations you have written in it in just twenty days is incredible, you have clearly improved a lot, not just because learned all these stuff, but also because by learning all these hard concepts you trained your brain, and probably will be able to learn things in the future easier now. Also, I'm gonna disagree with Mirielle, pressing some stupid buttons in an editor without knowing whats happening to the code isn't good, if you know how the code works you can use it better, and its just more flexible. I also wanna add that SVG is very important to web, especially now with all these different devices that come with all these different shapes and sizes.

Answer 5

Seems you did quite a jurney so dont give up. Whatever you do its a plus and cant be useless. You spend some time to learn few things its just benefit for you and some day can be very usefull for you.

Answer 6

I find this question by scrolling your profile.

Your main concern is whether SVG coding is useful, compared with using a SVG editor. Am I right?

I must say, being able to create SVG images with by SVG coding is a valuable technique.

But I am not good at explaining why it is.

So I better leave it to experts of this field: Richard Myatt, Jay, Mitali

Answer 7

It's not a waste of time in my opinion. Yes there are SVG editors and libraries dedicated to SVG such as svgjs but the thing is is that you will now know how it works and how to make animations with ease.

The concepts to do with making SVG Images and animations are also similar in other associated libraries so you'll understand how to draw a lot better and you'll get am awareness of how the objects are animated and how colors work etc

Answer 8

Richard Myatt
Mitali