Do not learn programming...

A lot of people will not initially agree with the title of my post but they will agree eventually.

So imagine you want to be a football player. All you do is to read about football from books and mostly watch players play on television. You have mastered each and every skill either by reading or watching someone else. You have also watched some of the most skillful players play during live matches so much so that you can even predict the opponent's next move. After sometime, you think you are ready to go pro. By some mystery, you get called up by one of the top football clubs to come justify yourself. So you go to the training field very confident that you can do better than all the other players. Then training start and you are watching from the bench. Whenever someone makes a wrong pass or tackle, in your head, you'd be like, "I can do better than this guy 😒". You couldn't wait to be on the pitch. Then the coach points to you to get ready. You got up all dressed and warmed up. Now you are thrown into the battle field (the football pitch) and all of a sudden you froze 🥶. You've forgotten all those skills that you've read and watched other people do. You can't string a single pass to your nearest team member. You can't stop an opponent from scoring. Worst you can even shoot to score from 2 yards. In summary, you are a complete flop. You are nothing but a liability to the team. Well by then, the coach has seen enough and pulls you out. That's it for you. You didn't make it. You didn't get that contract you so 'worked hard for'. And you start to ask yourself, 'What went wrong? 😢'.
Well it's simple. You failed to learn how to play football. Football is a game that requires you to practice day in day out. There are times you'll learn things from books and videos but you need to go out on the pitch and put it into practice.

So enough about football (hope you get the analogy by now). If you want to good at programming, you need to practice all that you read and watch. A lot of beginners think they will just watch YouTube videos and that will make them the next big coding star. If you want to be a good software engineer, you need to practice more. Do not ever think that the videos are enough to make you that good.
Do not learn programming by just reading and watching videos. Turn on your computer, follow the tutorials and start building your own projects. You will definitely make mistakes but its all part of the learning process. Mistakes will make you learn new things that probably was never mentioned in the tutorials. Do not give up. Focus on getting better. You can seek help from various communities and platforms. And hey, Google is always there for you 😉.
And I bet now you'll agree with me.
See you on the next one 👋.