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There's no speed limit (2009)

sivers.org

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Re: There's no speed limit (2009)

#121

Post by andmcgregor »

sivers wrote: post #7

Surprised to see a post of mine here on Hacker News. (First time in a long time. Thanks!) Feel free to ask me absolutely anything here.

Great post Derek! What would be your best advice for someone with no technical skills (except html/css) who is going to start to learn how to code?

Since our interview in Singapore I've decided to devote myself 100% to learning to code (Rails to start with) during the second half of the year (I applied the 80/20 principal to my documentary re-interviews and travel).

When someone asks: "I really want to learn how to code, what should I do?" the answer is always the same: It's possible + you've just got to devote the time toward learning. If you are passionate about it you will stick with it. The answer has always been pretty clear for me: you just sit down and start learning how to code.

Basically, learning technical skills for me are kind of an inevitability rather than something I'm thinking about. I'm just looking for advice in regards to learning and efficiency. I really like your ideas + philosophy about self-learning, and remember you talking about learning methods in a Mixergy interview, e.g. spaced repetition software for language learning. Any similar advice about coding?

Basically, is there a way to increase the speed limit when learning to code?

Would you also recommend working on a web application while learning to code (since you started CD Baby in a similar way)?

Thanks in advance for the reply :)

Re: There's no speed limit (2009)

#122

Post by sivers »

jseliger wrote: post #119

I teach English Honors composition, and on the last day of each semester I send this as part of my "Last E-mail:" Now for the small message that's really big. This is the post that could but probably won't change your life: "There’s no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life)": http://sivers.org/kimo . I say "could," because most of you probably won't click the link; of those of you who do, most of you won't r…

Wow! Thanks Jake! I really appreciate it.

Re: There's no speed limit (2009)

#123

Post by rlander »

sivers wrote: post #7

Surprised to see a post of mine here on Hacker News. (First time in a long time. Thanks!) Feel free to ask me absolutely anything here.

I guess this is a good opportunity to thank you. I read it a few years ago and it really changed the way I live.

My current startup only exists because of this post.

Re: There's no speed limit (2009)

#124

Post by sivers »

andmcgregor wrote: post #121
sivers wrote: post #7

Surprised to see a post of mine here on Hacker News. (First time in a long time. Thanks!) Feel free to ask me absolutely anything here.

Great post Derek! What would be your best advice for someone with no technical skills (except html/css) who is going to start to learn how to code? Since our interview in Singapore I've decided to devote myself 100% to learning to code (Rails to start with) during the second half of the year (I applied the 80/20 principal to my documentary re-interviews and travel). When someone asks: "I really want to learn how to c…

The best approaches I've found are:

http://www.codeschool.com/

and

http://eloquentjavascript.net/

But I do think it's crucial to have some little project that's actually live and launched, that people are using, that you can add things to and constantly improve.

It helps you get immediate feedback, and remember why you're doing what you're doing: to make other people's lives better!

You don't want to just be learning in a vaccuum for months or years, not being of benefit to anyone except some maybe-future-self years from now.

Even if you start with some plain HTML site, and add nothing but a dumb "The time is now " + Time.now() -- then at least you've started, and you can improve from there.

As you go through Code School, or Eloquent JavaScript, or whatever other ways you learn, try to find a way to apply what you've learned to your site.

And lastly: learning by NECESSITY is the most effective way. If you HAVE to figure out how to make your site do some kind of function because you have people complaining to you that it's not, then you'll go figure out how to do it, and remember it with an intensity that you just don't get from, "OK, now it's time for Chapter 7."

Re: There's no speed limit (2009)

#125

Post by sivers »

rlander wrote: post #123
sivers wrote: post #7

Surprised to see a post of mine here on Hacker News. (First time in a long time. Thanks!) Feel free to ask me absolutely anything here.

I guess this is a good opportunity to thank you. I read it a few years ago and it really changed the way I live. My current startup only exists because of this post.

Whoo-hoo! That's awesome to hear. Thank you.

Sometimes I wonder why I take hours to write up and edit (and edit and edit) these blog posts on my site. Thanks for the reminder. I really appreciate it.

Re: There's no speed limit (2009)

#126

Post by trafficlight »

cgag wrote: post #104
sivers wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, honestly I'm learning Rails, Sinatra, Sequel, Nginx, JavaScript, jQuery, and Backbone, all back-to-back from books and test projects, quite intensely, and not really matching those 1,2,3 steps, because I'm often in too deep over my head without a clear vision of what I need to do next. It's discouraging. But I am quite driven to turn my next app/business ideas into reality : http://50pop.com/code Definitely not…

Do you have any recommended books/resources on the last 4? Particularly Nginx though. I like that you have everything planned out to be multi-lingual from the start on your projects. I remember reading your uses.this interview a while back and you talked about using wendlin/learning chinese. Are you still doing that, if so, how's that going?

I just set up nginx for the first time yesterday and I found the wiki to be really useful. http://wiki.nginx.org/Main

It looks like they also sell a book, but it was published July 2010, so I'm not sure how much has changed since.

Re: There's no speed limit (2009)

#127

Post by sivers »

cgag wrote: post #104
sivers wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, honestly I'm learning Rails, Sinatra, Sequel, Nginx, JavaScript, jQuery, and Backbone, all back-to-back from books and test projects, quite intensely, and not really matching those 1,2,3 steps, because I'm often in too deep over my head without a clear vision of what I need to do next. It's discouraging. But I am quite driven to turn my next app/business ideas into reality : http://50pop.com/code Definitely not…

Do you have any recommended books/resources on the last 4? Particularly Nginx though. I like that you have everything planned out to be multi-lingual from the start on your projects. I remember reading your uses.this interview a while back and you talked about using wendlin/learning chinese. Are you still doing that, if so, how's that going?

The best resources I've found so far are:

Nginx: http://wiki.nginx.org/Main

JavaScript: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/Professional-JavaScri... and http://eloquentjavascript.net/

jQuery: http://www.sitepoint.com/books/jquery2/ and http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfjquery/

Backbone: https://peepcode.com/products/backbone-js and http://backbonetutorials.com/ ... but I've barely started.

And yeah I'm still learning Chinese, but I've scaled it back, because I realized that the programming is more important to me now, and I wasn't getting all the programming done that I wanted to because I was taking 2 hours a day on my Chinese.

Re: There's no speed limit (2009)

#128

Post by wkriski »

Where are you? What are you doing now? What is your next big project?

Love Awaken the Giant Within. I've been trying to sell online guitar courses for many years, but now I've settled on doing well-paying remote IT contracts and taking months off in between to practice jazz guitar improvisation. I love sharing what I've learned but I guess it doesn't have to be a money maker, just something we all instinctively love to do.

Re: There's no speed limit (2009)

#129

Post by wkriski »

sivers wrote: post #59
brimpa wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I find my Kimo Williams?

I don't know. Any ideas, anyone?

For jazz guitar I find teachers with online videos that resonate. Then I manage to contact them and pay for direct Skype chats/lessons. It doesn't have to be a formal college setting IMO.

Re: There's no speed limit (2009)

#130

Post by EvilTerran »

sivers wrote: post #116
EvilTerran wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That book looks... reasonably promising, I guess; however... "How do you handle stress and burnout?" "Power through it." I'm sorry, but that's terrible advice. You might as well tell someone with depression to "just get over it already".

I wasn't saying "stop being stressed and burned-out". I mean that any time any of us get to that point, there are a few approaches we could take. (1) - Go take a long vacation. (2) - Quit and change your approach. (3) - Don't change a thing. Sleep tonight, but tomorrow just keep pushing the same direction as you've been doing. It'll be painful, you'll scream and complain, but just keep working anyway. I've tried all…

I guess the thing to bear in mind for this sort of lifestyle advice is: your mileage may vary. While one person experiencing "burn-out" may respond well to powering through it, as in your case, another person feeling "burned out" may follow the same suggestion only to run themselves into the ground doing so.

A close family member of mine tried to power through her feelings of being burnt out, and wound up spending the next two years debilitated by chronic fatigue -- needing lifts to her various therapists because even just walking to the bus stop caused her physical pain, never mind the sensory overload she suffered in noise & crowds.

As such, I just felt it was important to emphasise that "powering through" doesn't work for everyone or every situation. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

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