When a good friend of mine started to ask about learning programming I answered that “be ready to do it every day, be ready to learn for the next 10 years” as

When a good friend of mine started to ask about learning programming I answered that “be ready to do it every day, be ready to learn for the next 10 years” asked him to seriously think about that and we’ll talk again in a week there is much more to it, but imho those are the 2 points that I’ve seen somehow valid for the last 20 years or so and when I read “I’ve been on again off again with it” I thought “first mistake”, really if I would have 2 quick advices to give do it everyday: because it test how much you can take, if you feel programming 2 days in a row is “too much” that’s probably a good sign “it’s not for you” be ready to do it for 10 years: search “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years” by Peter Norvig and you will understand why. A lot of ppl when it come to “learn how to program” underestimate very basic stuff like the involvement and the time it take, I saw ppl give up just because it took too much time or because they thought they would be good at it much sooner. So yeah staying in front of a computer for hours, for days, solving problems with code, it may not fit everyone, but to me the longer you can keep at it, or if you forgot to eat, to sleep while doing it, are in general good signs of “you can do it”. All the 8 points are very valid, even if some could be argued, I personally remember the fear, back in the 90s for a full month I was paralysed because of the fear to do wrong, the fear to break stuff. If it was not for this older guy who kept encouraging and reassuring me I would have probably gave up, so I would say try to get a mentor. But the opposite advice would work too: don’t get a mentor and try to understand everything by yourself, or in another context: resist the urge to go ask your question on stack overflow and try to solve as much of it by yourself. Solved it? then keep not asking questions on stack overflow as long as you can. IMHO there are many ways to learn programming, some advices would not fit everyone, there are no best ways to do it.