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I started out with Codecademy and gave up lots of times (over about 6 months) before I decided to commit to learning full time. My plan was to lock myself in a

• milkytron 10y ago
  I think it takes a certain kind of person to teach themselves something they have never done before without much in-person interaction. Many times programmers will have at least a few other people around that can give them a second perspective and then it becomes a symbiotic relationship where both people benefit. Some people can learn everything they need to on their own simply by knowing what they need to look for, if you don't know what you're looking for, the search becomes infinitely more difficult. Edit: When I say a few other people around, I don't mean in person although that is common. Even just having people who respond quickly to messages or posts on websites will help tons.
  • yomly 10y ago
    While this learning style certainly suits more people than others, it is definitely a skill that can be improved. For a lack of a better term, I'd call it researching. Expressed in another way, it is the ability to state (and constantly restate in new ways) a problem you are facing. The rest comes from pure grit in refusing to give up. A few things I noticed from my own journey... 1. Jargon matters: Learning the "nomenclature" (see, the jargon term for jargon) makes your life so much easier when researching. I recall reading a paper which sought to bridge the gap between biology and computer science, the author's first task was to instruct the reader on the "language of the space" and it was assumed the reader should otherwise be able to learn the concepts quite quickly. Being able to phrase your problem in the language of the field will give you much better leads when looking things up. When you encounter a new term, try to appreciate that term for what it is, avoid trying to constantly translate it back into your own terms, though this is definitely useful for gaining an understanding to begin with. A parallel to learning languages it to "learn like a baby" and to avoid translating a new term back to your mother tongue. 2. All learning is good, no time is wasted. From experience learning and teaching others, there is a mental trap that time spent "looking for a solution" is time wasted - you're not learning your solution and you're not progressing through whatever learning materials you're trying to work through. This is not a constructive mental feedback loop as it breeds frustration. As mentioned above, research is a skill and time spent researching is practising that skill. You could even argue its more useful as its a far more general than knowing how to solve specific problem X in front of you. Everyone has been in that stage where you were lost because you had no idea what a "mutable object" was or you read your first null pointer exception and had no idea where to start. Or worse, reading the poorly explained and formatted docs of some unfamiliar software, in an unfamiliar programming language trying to do something for the first time. My advice to the people who are still struggling in this phase: stick with it, don't be disheartened if other people are seemingly picking it up faster or easier than you, everyone goes at their own pace and as long as you're learning, you're moving forward. Sometimes finding your way to the answer is the bigger lesson than knowing the answer itself.