Finished a few individual frontend and backend tutorials separately over the past couple of months, small React components here, a basic Node server there, but every time I try to actually combine the two into one coherent full stack project of my own, I end up completely stuck on how to organize the actual folders and files sensibly before I have even written any real functionality specific to the project itself.
Looked at a few example projects on GitHub for reference, but most of them seem to already assume a fair amount of prior structural knowledge that the tutorials I followed never actually explained clearly, things like where exactly API route files should live relative to the frontend code, whether the frontend and backend should even sit in the same repository at all or be kept completely separate from the very start of the project.
I do have a specific project idea I actually want to build, a simple habit tracker for personal use initially, nothing overly ambitious for a first real attempt, but I keep getting stuck at this exact planning and structuring stage before writing a single meaningful line of actual application logic, which is honestly starting to feel more discouraging than the actual coding itself has been so far in my limited experience.
A friend who works professionally as a developer suggested just picking any reasonably popular starter template and modifying it gradually rather than trying to design the entire structure myself from a completely blank slate, which sounds like reasonable practical advice, though I am not entirely sure which specific starter template would actually make sense for a project this genuinely small and simple in scope.
For anyone who remembers going through this exact same stuck point early on themselves, how did you actually get past it, and would you specifically recommend starting from a template versus building the folder structure up gradually and manually yourself as you actually learn what each part is genuinely for?