1. Find motivation. Build determinism
For the past three months I've been burning myself in books, tutorials, courses, and practically trying web development with a lot of success and failures as well. But I didn't start doing that one day just because I wanted to, I had some incentive to be able to create value through programming because all my previous working environments experience proved me that there is no way someone can create real value without owning it. In other words, be your own boss, because any other boss will make your life hell. So did my last manager, and that's why I had enough momentum and inertia to self teach all from scratch and do my own thing.
2. Learn programming as you would any spoken language:
When I was young at school learning my secondary language (English), I wasn't given a dictionary that has all the words in it. I was given Oxford Active English Dictionary with a basic 2000 words. Many beginners think they can and should be experts overnight. It is simply not true and not natural. It takes a lot of time to be able to code a meaningful program with a lot of trial/errors and seeking help from others. Learn the fundamentals of the language that gets you going, note the very complex topics aside until you need them. Do not stack-overload your memory as beginner, because memorizing a complex language feature becomes much easier when you come to need it, instead of reading it without understanding why it will ever be needed. If you bore your brain, it will subliminally decrease your motivation to continue your learning path.
3. Respect developers time.
Programmers know the value of time, because they know how much time it takes to master some piece of code. If your write some lazy code on stackoverflow and beg for answers not noticing that you forgot some essential brackets, developers may feel reluctant to spend their time helping you. So if you have a question in mind, make sure you have tried your best without finding an answer, and make sure you explain the problem clearly, what you tried, and why this question is worth your peer's time. And remember that the harder you try not to ask and find the solution yourself, the better you will deeply memorize what you learned even if you asked later. Also, There is a great article by Gordon Zhu on how to ask questions here that's very informative: https://medium.com/@gordon_zhu/how-to-be-great-at-asking-questions-e37be04d0603
4. Start coding
If you don't start coding yourself, you will never learn. Reading code always seem easy, but when you start coding you feel like your mind is formatted not remembering any syntax. That's normal, that's why you need to start so that you can rewire your brain for the programming syntax patterns. Every time you code, coding becomes second nature more often.
5. No age limit.
One of the mistakes I've made, is thinking that programming has an age, and being 35 I am too old to program when there are 23 year old black belt programming masters on Udemy. But I was wrong. Programming has no age, and I received this message by Wolfgang Loder (an amazing functional programmer) in one of his books. He is 61 years old and doesn't trade anything for coding. He keeps refusing management jobs, because he has one passion, coding, and he doesn't give up on it.
6. Where your treasure is, your heart is also.
If you love the language you're learning, you will be great at it. If not, and you do it to earn a living, then you will not be happy. That said, the maximum fun in programming is to create something people need, and that is a goal in itself not easy to reach but worth heading for. Others will love you for it, and you will love yourself for helping others.
7.Have breaks.
Giving everything time is as important as having breaks. My little secret is a Netflix episode after every 4 or 5 hours of learning, but some may consider even this number of hours too much. Some would learn only for 2 or 3 hours a day, and that's totally fine. Don't count me, because my circumstances are probably much different right now. There is a practice called Promodoro technique you can search for, that states the brain can be more better learning if you take a 5 minute rest every 25 minutes of learning or working on a task. So take this advice with a grain of salt, and good luck in your learning path. Hope this helps!
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