Tips On Learning How To Code

Key Takeaways

hey guys in this video we're going to be talking about some tips when learning how to program okay whether you're learning a language or a specific framework or whatever it may be now if you haven't watched my healthy tips for programmers video I would suggest checking that out as well I'll put a link in the description that covers more of the physical and mental health areas all right so uh first thing we're going to discuss is how to remember all the code you learn and how to retain that stuff this is something that every programmer battles with people ask me all the time how do you remember all these different languages and Frameworks and constructs how do you have that much space in your mind well ironically uh the first thing to do is to not remember you don't want to Simply remember the characters that you're looking at on the screen you want to understand and comprehend it okay there's a huge difference in cramming remembered information into your mind than really comprehending what's happening and how the logic is working and you have to remember that all code is different so if you just remember uh let's say some kind of helpful function and then later on you run into some code where that function could be used to solve a particular problem but one little thing has changed from what you've remembered so you're going to get stuck because you simply remembered the structure of the code uh but you didn't really understand or or grasp the concept if you had then you'd be able to test other ways of doing it and you'd be able to adopt to this new change it's kind of like reading a book and just just memorizing the words but not really understanding the story behind them and you want to be an active learner not a passive learner a passive learner basically listens and takes notes to try to retain the information for the next test and an active learner is aimed at creating similar situations and solving problems so it's a much more Dynamic way of learning so you want to put what you've learned into use into common use something you would actually face in the real world World um first you want to just run the original code exactly as is exactly as you read it or saw it on a video um and then you really want to understand the logic of every single line and every single character okay so if there's one piece of code or function that you don't know uh or you don't understand what it does Google the out of it every function every expression figure out what that line does and how it does it because you're you not knowing that one line of code could make or break you using that function or whatever it is in the future future situations and then uh once you really understand a piece of code you want to try and make some changes start small uh start by adding uh an extra piece of functionality or if you don't even have to do that you can just um clean it up maybe uh maybe there's some code that is very similar in the script and you can put put the those into a custom function so you don't have to repeat yourself and you save yourself a few lines just something small like that to start with and once you made some small changes try and recreate something completely new using that same type of logic this is where act Active Learning really shines if you just remember the code then you're not going to be able to create something new uh you'll only be able to repeat the same thing over and over uh if you truly understand the logic then everything else is just a variable okay this makes you a much more Dynamic programmer now when you're learning something new you're going to make mistakes and probably a lot of them you're going to get strange errors of all different types and this is actually a good thing fixing errors is one of the best things you can do to learn in programming and Google is your best friend in these situations search sites like stack Overflow uh for all the the the different types of error messages that you're getting and it might take a while but eventually you're going to find what you're looking for okay so as I said earlier you don't want to just remember code you want to understand it but sometimes you do need to go back and check the the correct syntax especially if you're working with more than one language sometimes I'm writing JavaScript and then all of a sudden I'll start going into PHP I'll start adding um you know money signs on my variables I won't use VAR and so on uh it's easy to get the syntax of multiple languages confused uh so if you have multiple references that you can go back and check the exact structure and the exact syntax uh that's really helpful and there's a couple ways to do this so one is to keep small text files with common Snippets for each language on uh keep it right on your local machine or you could use a cloud service like Dropbox so you can access them from anywhere I have a folder called Snippets and then I have subfolders with each language and then another level for certain Frameworks of that language okay uh there's also a lot of online tools that you can use to store and look up Snippets gist boox is a really popular one you just need a GitHub account and you can sign up for free um you can categorize Snippets into colorcoded folders and you can label them search for them and so on C snip is another really cool snippet manager uh you can sign up with your GitHub account and I've Heard lots of good things about snip Leaf but I've never actually used it uh and for most of these snippet managers they allow you to set your code to private so only you can see it or to public if you want other people to be able to use your Snippets another great resource is documentation whether it's the documentation of a language like php.net or docs for specific framework or Library um you'll be able to find all the functions the class names and so on okay you also have uh informational sites and blog posts I have about 100 different blog post bookmarked that I use to uh to go back and look at examples and uh references to certain blocks of code another tip when learning to program is to write code every single day even if it's only for 20 or 30 minutes you want this stuff fresh in your mind if you stop coding for a month or two or even less than that sometimes your mind is going to stop working in that particular way of problem solving you're going to forget a lot so forgetting is is much easier than learning people have actually forgotten full programming languages from not using that part of their brain for so long you know it's usually pretty easy to get back but it does take that extra time where if you just practice it more often you wouldn't have lost that knowledge all right now try to learn something new every day even if you have to wake up a half hour earlier to watch a couple tutorials that can help you a lot all right you also want to stay up to date with trends current trends in technology and more specifically in programming uh this is for any programmer or developer not just people learning uh and if a cooworker starts talking to you about a common Trend you want to be able to respond uh and it also gets your brain going and gives you that much more knowledge all right so there there's some common principles in computer programming and web development that apply to a lot of different situations we even have fancy acronyms for them so kiss or keep it simple stupid uh it doesn't just apply to programming but it definitely does apply you don't want to make things more complex than they need to be don't try to show off and make something complex just to make it complex remember it's not just writing code that you need to think about you also need to think about maintaining it and the more complex the harder it is to maintain so dry or don't repeat yourself is another really helpful principle to stick by when you're learning so if you have two or more pieces of code that are pretty similar and they just have different variables you want to put those into a single function or method or class or something like that uh make your code as simple and as short as you can while keeping the same functionality okay it'll help you and anyone else who uses the your code in the future okay there's also uh yagy or yagy I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce it but it stands for you aren't going to need it and what this means is you should only Implement what you actually need uh especially if it's a big project and you're just starting out focus on the key features that you absolutely need and then later on you can think about the extra bells and whistles okay now this doesn't always apply sometimes you do need to plan for future growth uh but just try to stay focused on the absolute Necessities if you can so this last slide is probably the most important there's going to be times when you get stuck and you start to really question if this is what you want to be doing or not want to be but if this is what you should be doing you want you start thinking that you're not smart enough uh if you've ever felt like that trust me you're not alone especially if you're like me and you didn't grow up in front of a computer screen and you may think since you weren't a tech geek all your life that this isn't the place for you and you don't fit in uh I can't tell you how many times that I felt like that myself but the most important thing is that you stick with it and have confidence in yourself all right you you can't be doubting yourself and you can't beat yourself up okay we all get to that place where we get stuck and it seems like it's impossible to find the answer all right but if you do fall and you get into a slump just make sure you get back up and that may sound cliche but it that doesn't make it any less true okay it's also important to do what you love if you love design and front end stuff try to do as much as that as you can if you love logic and algorithms and backend stuff then do that all right just whatever you do don't give up all right so enough with the self-help stuff that's it guys for this video hopefully you enjoyed it and you'll use some of this stuff to keep learning more and more and that's it thanks and I'll see you next time