This article was originally published at: https://www.blog.duomly.com/how-to-learn-programming-faster-10-tips-and-tricks/
If you decided you want to be a programmer, you have to remember that it means you are going to learn constantly. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just started, or if you have an experience, there will be something new, you want to master. Of course, at the beginning of your programming adventure, you have much more to learn.
In the beginning, everything may seem very exciting. After you gathered all the sources, courses, books, and all you need, it may seem like you are going to study for ages to complete everything and reach your goal. But it doesn’t have to be like that, if you will learn wise, then it’s possible to learn programming faster.
In this article, I would like to share with you a few methods that helped me to learn faster. I hope it will be helpful for you as well.
Let’s start!
1. Basics are important
To understand any topic, you have to understand the fundamentals. The same rule concerns programming. There is no point to start from building an advanced application if you don’t know the basic concepts of the programming language. It will frustrate you, and give you the feeling that programming is crazy complicated. If you start from the beginning, everything will be clear. Never think of it, as it’s a waste of time. It will save lots of your time in the future.
The same is about learning frameworks, not knowing the programming language. Of course, it’s possible but challenging.
So, remember, start from scratch, and understand the essentials.
2. Find the right method
There are tones of different resources to learn programming, videos, books, tutorials, courses. Some people prefer to read a book, others want to watch the video course, and others prefer to do an interactive course (like Duomly’s HTML & CSS course). It’s fine until it fits your preference. If you selected the proper resources, you wouldn’t feel bored fast, and learning will bring you lots of fun.
So, remember, the most important is to find the best way for you.
3. Practice, practice, practice
Programming is about the theory and lots of practice. When you learn something new form the theoretical resource, create a project. Learning by doing will give you the best experience and much understanding. Reading the theory or the code is not enough to understand programming. Your job is going to be about creating the code, so you have to do it to learn.
Also, remember to increase the complexity of your projects when you are learning new things. From simple HTML login form, you can create the whole application, implementing other things you’ve learned. You can also improve your existing code using best practices.
Every practical task is a new challenge, and with new challenges, you won’t be bored easily, and learning will become a nice, daily routine.
Remember, the more lines of code you will create, the more you will learn.
4. Be curious
Curiosity will help you a lot with learning. You can learn new things when you are actually not learning. What I mean is, that if you are interested in the topic, you will search for additional resources, like articles or Youtube videos, to develop your knowledge. Also, you can join to programming forums or Facebook groups, and learn a lot by asking questions to more experienced programmers.
They may give you the knowledge which you won’t find in the books and courses because they are sharing with you their experience from real-life programming. So, curiosity helps you to get great knowledge from experienced people and the possibility to discuss interesting programming topics from a different perspective.
5. Ask for help
When you stuck with the issue, and your code doesn’t work, you spend days to debug it and fix it; it’s a good idea to ask for help. Probably you will find the solution if you will spend another few days on fixing your code, but someone experienced can take a look at your code and help you the solution in a few hours probably. Also, they explain to you what was wrong. This way you will understand your bug, and depends on how much time does it take to debug, but I’m pretty sure you’ll remember what you should avoid in the future.
To ask for help, you should get an account on the website like Stackoverflow or join programming Facebook groups. To find out how the proper help request should look like watch this video.
6. Take care about productivity
Learning programming requires the right environment and organization. Prepare yourself a nice, clean desk with the computer, if you like music to focus, set a playlist for learning, turn off everything that may disturb you or distract you. It’s a great idea to plan a small, 5 minutes breaks after each one hour. It’s essential to take a few minutes of rest. It will help you to clear your mind, and your brain will absorb much more knowledge.
7. Learn to debug
Programming is solving tones of issues, no matter if you are a beginner or expert, you will have to debug your code very often. If you didn’t use to solving problems, it might be frustrating unless you will learn how to find what is wrong. The most important is to know what doesn’t work, then finding the proper solution is much faster. It’s a great idea to learn how to use debugging tools. If you are good at debugging, learning programming will go much faster.
8. Learn programming logic
When you start with programming, you will notice that there are some common, repeated patterns. It is essential to take a look at the problems from a programming perspective and learn this specific logic. Also, remember that almost every task which you have to do in programming is possible to solve. It’s great if you will learn the patterns, and try to create simple solutions not to overcomplicate your code. Programming will seem to you quite easy if you will get how to think, and what’s the logic behind.
9. Get into community
The programming community is enormous. There are tones of forums, websites like Stackoverflow, Facebook groups, Reddit forums, meetups, and many more virtual or real places where you can join. Meeting other programmers and share the knowledge and experiences is a great way to learn programming as well. You are getting knowledge from others, you can share, discuss, or even show your code to others for review. If other programmers can see your projects, they may tell you what can be done better, and a helpful tip is priceless.
10. Build your portfolio
Probably the reason why you started learning how to code, is to find a programming job. To make it faster, you can take advantage of the time when you are learning, start building your Github repository just from the beginning. I recommend to start a Github account and use git to your training projects. If you don’t know how to do it what it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70e58se9lHk. It will also motivate you to polish your code if you want to add it to your resume.
Conclusion
In the article above, I shared with you ten tips that help me to learn programming faster. To start using most of these tips, you don’t need to prepare yourself in any specific way. Some of them are important, like learning the basics first. It will not only save your time on learning but later you will have an excellent background to learn different technologies.
I hope you will find all the tips useful during your learning adventure, and you will be able to become a programmer faster, and having lots of fun during the learning!
Have a nice and fast learning!
This article was originally published at: https://www.blog.duomly.com/how-to-learn-programming-faster-10-tips-and-tricks/
Top comments (21)
I think many people have a lack of motivation and perseverance to finish learning programming. I have many friends of non-programmers who wanted to learn the basics of programming, but most of them studied only a few chapters of a book or a few videos on YouTube.
The lack of self-control is the main enemy in studying.
I would say lack of self-discipline is the biggest enemy in life.
That's true if you are able to set a time of the day to learn and keep the plan, then you are saved :)
Agreed
Self-control and proper motivation is a lot while learning programming! :)
"1. Basics are important". This one is crucial. So many times I meet people who don't know a thing about Javascript, but want to learn React of Vue. Not going to work. Start with Vanilla Javascript, then ES6/10, and then frameworks. IMO
You are right, the programming language should go always first. :)
"I took an arrow to the knee..." :)
I think the major problem with programming learning is the hours of sitting down,detached from the rest of the world and writing,solving and debugging codes.
And the strain of how much the brain works for hours thinking and been creative.
Most people finds that strenuous, boring and hard.
Programming is abit more difficult than Mathematics because unlike Maths it changes almost everyday that as well make it hard for people who cant keep up.
As said before, this is why you need to find some passion for what you are learning, and you have to find a technology that is suitable for you.
And about sitting alone, remember you can go to meetups, or join any community which has a live meeting not only online :)
This was important for me. Programming can sometimes be a very lonely experience -- having someone to discuss problems with stopped me from feeling isolated. That was particularly true in the early days. The solitary lifestyle is fine for some people ... for the rest, find someone to talk to.
Yep, it's important! If you find people who do the same and find it interesting you may learn a lot and feel a part of something bigger. We definitely think that being a part of the community is important.
Excuses are not a friend of learning, that's true. But if you are motivated and really interested in the subject it should come easy :) That's why it's important to like whatever you are learning and find at least some passion for this.
When i learned to program it was mostly that drive to do it because my family hated tech and always told me i couldn't do it so it drove me to prove them wrong.
Oh, and get to know your IDE. And especially all the shortcuts. A colleague of mine is still selecting lines to delete with his cursor, among other things. Makes me cringe
That can make your work much easier, right :)
How important is it to learn data structures like; BST, Queues, Graphs and algorithmic approaches to problems like divide and conquer
Is there any community/collaborative projects that new programmers can get involved in, primarily javascript
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