The disclaimer for this post is, if you think I would be suggesting some website or author who will teach you how to code and you will be a perfect developer within a few days, then you’ll be disappointed. I would request you to read the entire post to get the whole picture on the things I will be sharing. I will also share the mistakes people make when learning to code or learning any new programming language.
Table of Contents
Practice makes man perfect
I came across this line in school which said “Practice makes man perfect”. There is no substitution for practice and hard work. It’s no rocket science; the only tip I will provide you is to practice, practice and practice for hours “without distraction”. You might think that someone is going to teach you the syntax on how to code in Python, Java or any other language, but the bitter truth is if you want to learn it effectively you have to get your hands dirty and you should be self taught. Even if you go over any high rated online course but don’t practice, then you would be on the back foot and won’t be proficient in programming.
Concentration and focus
In this digital age, we humans have become slaves of smartphones and there is no doubt about that. I see people don’t concentrate while coding or while learning new technology, they constantly keep checking their phones as and when new notifications pop up. Though they are in classroom training or in the middle of an online training, people constantly refresh their apps instead of concentrating and practicing on what is taught. Simple idea here is to concentrate on your practice while you are learning for a specific amount of time without any distractions.
I believe a person will be able to concentrate on something for no more than 4 hours. Some have the capacity to concentrate and dedicate for 2-3 hours and I would say that is more than enough. 4 hours is the maximum you would want to consider. You need to develop the skill if you aren’t able to focus on something for long periods of time. There is a simple formula to learn coding effectively and perfectly.
$quality_work_produced = $time_spent * $amount_of_focus.
There is a book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport that you can read which tells how it is easy to get distracted in today’s world with a lot of social media presence. There is a lot discussed in this book so you can get your copy of the book from this link.
Programming is not a destination, it’s a journey, and you have to constantly keep on practicing time and time again and keep yourself updated with the latest technologies.
Advice to college students
Computer science is not like other studies like you will memorize the things, you get good grades and you are done. The real struggle begins once you get out of college. Grades won’t matter once you are handed over a user story to implement or a project to complete. The thing that will matter is how efficiently you code and within the time that is allotted to you.
In most of the institutions you will only be fed with bookish knowledge. You will only be taught how HashMap works, topics on operating systems etc, but what they won’t teach is how and in what circumstances you need to use what concepts. I don’t say that a college degree is useless, it is extremely important and that is what will create a base for you. Also not to intentionally blame the people who teach in college.
If you are an entry level programmer, the advice I would like to give is take a project and start coding. For instance if you are interested in mobile development, pick any topic for example creating an app that gives the user of the app a birthday reminder of their friends. You can also create a website using any of the web technologies that are currently in use highly in the IT industry. This will allow you to stand out from the crowd.
Basically what I am trying to say is you have to learn things by yourself rather than depending on others. The instructor in an online course will teach you all the concepts and where to apply. But I am 100% sure that you will forget very soon what you have learned. This happens with everyone. But if you practice and create more and more demo projects you will get a good hold on that language or technology.
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