You decided to start learning programming. You have started to learn programming concepts, you have decided which language you want to learn, and everything looks great.
Except it isn’t.
It’s frustrating; it’s boring; it’s painful. I am not here to make your life easy, but I hope that I will make it a little easier. Here are the 5 things that I believe will help you to become a better programmer.
Find the right source to learn from
I had a professor who said:
“It’s better to spend more time researching where to learn from, than actually learning from one source.”
And this is gold.
Let’s say that you have found a great book or a great video course that everyone is loving. You think that you will love it too, every word that you read/hear in the book/course you will understand, and after you finish it, you will become a master of the things you will learn (at least, I thought like that).
And maybe you will, but probably you won’t. Most (or let’s say, some) of the things you won’t understand, and it’s natural. You will try to read/watch again and again, but it’s not getting any clearer.
My advice is, try to find a great book/course, and start learning from, but use it more as a reference than learning source.
I am not suggesting to only go through the content. Try to understand the concept, but also research it (on Google). Look for more resources, more explanation, more examples. When you will understand the concept, save the source that helped you the most (bookmark the page), and search for examples that you can solve.
This way, it is easier to learn, because you are combining the explanations of different sources, and you are sticking with the most simple explanation that is working for you. Also, research is more interesting than reading\listening the same thing all over again.
Understand the base (minimum) necessary logic rather than implementation
This is important for a few reasons:
- First, if you understand the logic, it will be easier to learn the implementation
- Second, the implementation may change, but the base necessary logic won’t
At the very beginning, it will be difficult to differentiate between logic and implementation, and maybe you should try to learn and remember everything, but later try to understand and study just the minimum necessary required things.
I still google some basic things. But because I know what I have to do, I exactly know what to search for (only the implementation/syntax).
With this approach, you will spend your time wisely, and you will be able to learn more important things.
To learn your first programming language is very hard, but that’s because you have to learn programming concepts (the logic). After you learn that, you can learn any language (the implementation) you want, in a matter of weeks.
Code, code, code…
Learning programming is like learning how to drive, except it’s safer (at least, physically). You can read, you can learn, but when you sit down and start to drive, you’ll realize that you haven’t learned anything.
That’s why you should focus on coding. When you study something, try to learn the minimum, so you can start to code, and then code as you learn. There is a great answer on Quora, that mentions 3 rules that you should follow when coding.
- Write at least one line of code per day
- First, write code, then refactor
- No distractions when coding
Here, you can check the answer, that has reasoning for these rules. Maybe you can forget the second rule, but the other 2 are very important.
Attitude
I had to mention attitude. It is a hard path, especially at the beginning, so the right attitude is required. Hard work, believing in yourself, learning to say YES to everything is needed. More precisely, you say NO only when you are 100% sure that it isn’t possible to do. In any other case, you say YES, and you investigate, you try different approaches, you ask for help if it is necessary, you do everything you can. A time will come when you will need to learn to say NO, but first, you have to learn to say YES.
Rest
Of course, don’t forget to rest. You have to rest from the hard work you have done. Most of the stupid things I have done were when I was too tired. When you are tired, you don’t think rationally. You just want to finish your task, no matter. That’s when the biggest mistakes come. You won’t learn anything, you won’t do anything well, you are just wasting your time and nerves.
