Also, there is nothing like the pressure of having to deliver on a project that someone is paying you for. Necessity is the best teacher.
To Learn How to Program, It Has To Fulfill A Need
11–18 of 18 posts
Re: To Learn How to Program, It Has To Fulfill A Need
#12This reminds me: I'd love to see how many of CodeYear's sign-ups completed a term.
I have lots of friends who want to "learn to code" but get frustrated and quit. It's too easy to give up if you don't have "something bigger" continually pushing you forward.
Re: To Learn How to Program, It Has To Fulfill A Need
#13I agree, with the qualifier that the "need" can be something that you made up.
Like you, I started learning programming after college, and I worked through courses, books, lecture slides, tutorials, read library docs, etc. but I learn the most at times when I actually sit down and go through the whole process of designing and building a complete application that does something useful. This year I've made it a goal to write code every day, with the intention of this culminating in launching at least one complete web application this year as a side business for extra income. I have a couple of solid ideas that I think I can build (and sell), but the only way to learn how to build something is by trying to build it.
Tutorials and courses are great and are necessary up front, but your fingers really need to be typing code that is generated by your brain, often, in order for it to stick.
Re: To Learn How to Program, It Has To Fulfill A Need
#14I agree, with the qualifier that the "need" can be something that you made up. Like you, I started learning programming after college, and I worked through courses, books, lecture slides, tutorials, read library docs, etc. but I learn the most at times when I actually sit down and go through the whole process of designing and building a complete application that does something useful. This year I've made it a goal to…
completely agree. Also, learning to read documentation is such an invaluable skill. Just doing tutorials removes the need to figure out how to find things yourself. Until you try to build something that requires you to go beyond what you've learned in those tutorials, you won't learn how to read the docs.
Re: To Learn How to Program, It Has To Fulfill A Need
#15This reminds me: I'd love to see how many of CodeYear's sign-ups completed a term. I have lots of friends who want to "learn to code" but get frustrated and quit. It's too easy to give up if you don't have "something bigger" continually pushing you forward.
I think those sorts of things (I include Codeacademy in there as well) are good to just expose people to programming and a way of thinking. I'm not so sure those "learn to program" programs will produce many professional software engineers, but I think they're great introductions.
Re: To Learn How to Program, It Has To Fulfill A Need
#16This describes why I have such a hard time learning new languages. I want to learn Haskell, but I always end up giving up, because whatever I'm trying to do in Haskell, I can do in Python very easily.
So you will never dare to lose sight of shore to reach new lands?
Re: To Learn How to Program, It Has To Fulfill A Need
#17This describes why I have such a hard time learning new languages. I want to learn Haskell, but I always end up giving up, because whatever I'm trying to do in Haskell, I can do in Python very easily.
So you will never dare to lose sight of shore to reach new lands?
Why search for new land when you have no need to leave the land you're already on?
Re: To Learn How to Program, It Has To Fulfill A Need
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you will never dare to lose sight of shore to reach new lands?
Why search for new land when you have no need to leave the land you're already on?
I thought you recognized such a need by wanting to learn a new language and ideas..
I did Python for 7 years before I realized Haskell had huge advantages I find very important and it took an extra two years of gradual transition until I had dropped Python completely.