Web Dev full-stack [LAMP] since 2005, but much heavier on the JS stuff these days.
Jack of all Stacks, Master of some.
Always looking to learn new things. Always glad to help out, just ask.
Location
Atlanta, GA
Education
B.S. in Biochemistry 2004, M.S. in Computer Information Systems 2007
You don't need books to get good at programming. There are hundreds of free and paid interactive courses online that teach you things in a much more comprehensive way than books can. Also, you can CTRL+F [you know, search] things much faster.
Look at udemy.com , freecodecamp.org, w3schools.com etc.
For a beginner i recommend you pick a structured course rather than just doing tutorials or you'll get lost in all of it. There is a ton to learn and it continues to grow every day. Many tutorials and courses are crap made by beginners trying to teach before they are ready. We don't know what we don't know, remember that.
Find proven courses that have been around a few years with good reviews and go from there.
As for "how do you become a guru?"
If you already have a background in CS you can probably pick things up faster, in fact you were already taught some of these languages in college and should know the basics to get going a lot faster than most newbies starting from scratch.
It takes experience to get good. No one with less than 5 years experience is great at any language. No one with 5+ years experience on just one platform or at just one company working on one product is gonna be great either. It takes a lot of practice, and building and debugging dozens and hundreds of projects before you can be good at this. To be great takes technical understanding, knowing technical planning, understanding user interfaces, understanding how to debug different platforms/stacks and again all this only comes with experience.
Most people with 10+ years still aren't that good because they've been working on only a handful of projects all that time, they grow stale.
You have to learn new things to keep up, and new things are released daily.
You don't have to know them all, but if you're not learning every day you are falling behind.
You don't need books to get good at programming. There are hundreds of free and paid interactive courses online that teach you things in a much more comprehensive way than books can. Also, you can CTRL+F [you know, search] things much faster.
Look at udemy.com , freecodecamp.org, w3schools.com etc.
For a beginner i recommend you pick a structured course rather than just doing tutorials or you'll get lost in all of it. There is a ton to learn and it continues to grow every day. Many tutorials and courses are crap made by beginners trying to teach before they are ready. We don't know what we don't know, remember that.
Find proven courses that have been around a few years with good reviews and go from there.
As for "how do you become a guru?"
If you already have a background in CS you can probably pick things up faster, in fact you were already taught some of these languages in college and should know the basics to get going a lot faster than most newbies starting from scratch.
It takes experience to get good. No one with less than 5 years experience is great at any language. No one with 5+ years experience on just one platform or at just one company working on one product is gonna be great either. It takes a lot of practice, and building and debugging dozens and hundreds of projects before you can be good at this. To be great takes technical understanding, knowing technical planning, understanding user interfaces, understanding how to debug different platforms/stacks and again all this only comes with experience.
Most people with 10+ years still aren't that good because they've been working on only a handful of projects all that time, they grow stale.
You have to learn new things to keep up, and new things are released daily.
You don't have to know them all, but if you're not learning every day you are falling behind.
Many thanks for your in-depth guidance. Most appreciated.