Completing projects does a lot to help you learn, and you can complete more small projects per amount of time than larger ones. So give your learning projects s

Completing projects does a lot to help you learn, and you can complete more small projects per amount of time than larger ones. So give your learning projects small, defined scopes. Actually properly learn the tools you find yourself using a lot. Like if you use javascript, don't be the guy who doesn't understand how "var" and "this" behave. And don't feel pressured to know everything - if you only use Python to edit scripts twice a year then it's fine to be looking stuff up every line. Try to ignore programming fads, though of course as a person embedded in society it's hard to know what's just hype. On average these things last as long as they've already existed, so learning things that have been around continuously for a long time is pretty safe. Since you're just starting, it's particularly important for you to learn things that'll last a long time, since you have longer to use them. Learn something that lets you make a website backed by an SQL database. It's a pretty safe bet you'll want to do things that fit this description a whole bunch of times. This is also a place where a bizarrely small amount of expertise can change "start asking for VC money" projects into weekend projects. You can go your whole career without ever needing to write a parser, unless you know how to write parsers, then you'll see cases where they're the best solution all the time. I don't actually know how much this is "if all you have a hammer everything looks like a nail" and how much is "boy I'm glad I know hammers exist." It's more niche, but I've never regretted learning more vector math.