#1 Thing to Learn to Become a Self-Taught Programmer

hey everybody how's it going I'm Andy circuits and in this video what I wanted to talk to you guys about today is the number one thing to learn to become a self-taught programmer I've helped a lot of people on this channel in my mentorship program to make that transition from some job has nothing to do with programming to being a programmer and so I've seen a lot of people go through this process make a lot of mistakes and this one thing that I'm going to tell you about today is the one thing that if you get right if you figure out you're going to flourish but if you never quite understand it you're always going to struggle and this is again from something I've seen this is not just speculation or some tip I'm just trying to make out of thin air this is from something I see time and time again this is the thing that holds most people back so I'm definitely going to cover that in this video now before I get into that if you don't know who I am like I said I'm an Easter quits I mentor coach people to get into a career as a programmer so I cover videos on this channel about how to teach yourself how to program how to code and obviously how to land that first job so I highly recommend hating the subscribe button below also make sure it hit the bell I constitute get notifications anytime I put out a new video so to start off with here I think the biggest misconception of where most people who are getting into programming is that the understanding or the knowledge of the syntax and the rules of a programming language are the features of a programming language is the thing that's gonna get them their first shot right and the question that I see the most often here that really shows that this is the case is somebody will ask me something like say third line in JavaScript they'll ask me something along the lines of what exactly do I have to know in JavaScript what what features what methods what do I know what do I need to know in JavaScript to get me my first job and this represents a basic or fundamental dismiss understanding about what it takes to land that first job as a programmer do you have to know the syntax of a programming language do you need to know certain features of a programming language absolutely 100% yes but what you're gonna be hired to do is not to be some sort of encyclopedia of knowledge about JavaScript or Python or Java what you have to do is take your knowledge of the tool because that's what a programming language is is the tool of to actually produce a desired outcome and the desired outcome in most cases you have to be able to build an application from scratch you have to be able to add to an existing application that already exists you have to be able to resolve bugs or find bugs fix issues but those things are not going to happen from your knowledge of a programming language the key here is is understanding how to use logic to write computer code to produce a desired outcome the classic example of this is say I want you I'm gonna pay lots of money to create a to-do application an HTML CSS and JavaScript well if you're gonna be able to do that you could know everything about HTML everything about CSS and everything about JavaScript that has no bearing on whether you know how to put everything together to produce the outcome that I'm looking for which is I want to be able to log into an application I want to be able to add to Do's I wanna be able to remove to do is I want them to be saving to a database a knowledge of a programming language doesn't guarantee that you're gonna be able to do that so you have to understand how to use logic to write code for a machine for a computer so that produces an expected outcomes so what I'm really talking about here is understanding how to use the programming language to write rules for your computer to follow so that produces a desired outcome which is called logic right it's using logic or being able to write computer logic now this idea of logic has a couple different definitions I actually learned about this I thought logic was one thing but apparently actually there are many different definitions of what logic is there's mathematical logic there's like the the logic that you is used in philosophy what I'm simply talking about is this this abstract idea of how to write rules for a computer so that it provides a expected outcome or result so what is logical how would I describe it the way I would describe it is this let's say you're walking down your street in your neighborhood that you know very very well let's say a stranger comes up to you something you've never seen before and asks you how to get to the local Chipotle right you know exactly where this place is see instantly it comes your mind and what do you tell them you're like let's say you said you know what it's on 8th and Main Street well once you tell them that you would expect for them to say oh thank you so much that they will be on their way but instead what they say is you know I'm actually not from here can you tell me how to get there at that moment you have to go into your brain and you have to produce a map in your head of how to get there right you have to sort of see in your mind about how to actually navigate to get there so to explain to this other human being how to do that you're gonna say something like okay first what you're gonna do is you're gonna go down south on the current Street run once you reach the end of the street then you're gonna take a left and once you take a left wait until you find 8th Street and once you do find 8th Street then you're gonna take a right until you get to Main Street and then it'll be a thin Main just look to your left you'll see that you pull a on the corner now that person can go and take those directions that recipe for how to get to where they want to go to the Chipotle and they can now walk and follow those directions if they follow those directions they'll get there this process that you went through may have taken milliseconds to come up with maybe just instantly figured it out that process is actually pretty extraordinary it seems an extraordinary seems very banal right but the fact you're able to describe to another human being how to do this you use the English language in this case to communicate to them it's a pretty big deal now how this relates to programming well essentially you have to understand that when you're programming you're doing the same exact thing you're gonna give a computer a list or a set of things to follow a set of rules a set of instructions to follow and it will follow them now the thing you have to understand about computers if you haven't already maybe you are already a programmer you're already pretty well-versed into this is that computers are actually pretty dumb computers will do whatever you tell it to do within reason unless a bug happens or sorry unless an error occurs or you actually cause the the system in a crash or the app to crash the computer will do whatever you tell it to do so this is where things get really hard in programming this is where most people don't understand how to get to that next level you have to have a lot of practice in understanding first you have to really understand the semantics and the syntax of a programming language then you have to have enough experience of building small applications and more complex applications to understand how to produce the logic for a computer program about how to do what it needs to do so logic is the thing that you want to focus on you want to understand how to give a computer instructions about how to work from my experience most new developers most people were trying to get in this field they overlooked this right in other words when they've run into a problem with an app they're building say they've maybe they're building some sort of game when the game isn't doing what they wanted to do instead of going to and focusing on the logic and stepping through each line of code to make sure that their logic is sound or even pseudo coding so they know their logic is sound they'll focus on oh maybe there's some feature in this programming language I don't know maybe I have to go watch a tutorial so they end up focusing on thinking that they don't have enough knowledge when no in most cases they know enough they just are not focusing on the right thing so focus on logic as much as possible now you may ask yourself how do I get better at logic or how do I get better at writing rules for a computer to follow I've said it a million times in my channel and it's worth repeating again because it's that important the way that you get better or the way that you get better understanding how a computer can understand lines of code or how a computer can run an application that you give the rules to run is to create applications right so when you start out when you're at the very beginning you're not gonna know much so you're gonna have to start out with simple stuff give yourself small projects give yourself projects that are so insanely simple that it takes you maybe a day or a couple days to do or maybe even a couple weeks as you proceed you'll begin to understand the programming language better so you'll get a better sense for the syntax because syntax is important you have to understand that but over time you'll also begin to see how the rules that you're writing for the programming language or for the computer to run have an effect on the desired result that you're looking for eventually you should get into more complex applications applications that actually solve a real-world problem maybe a small one maybe could be something like getting the current weather based on zip code but that will require logic that will require for you to have a good understanding of how the logic of the program that you're trying to run is supposed to work so focus on building projects focus on experience on consistency over time and that's the thing that's really gonna get you to that next step so I hope this video has been helpful it is really one of the hardest things to learn as a programmer you want to focus on concepts knowledge and those are great you have to learn all those things you have to eventually get to the point where you're able to take a next step into more advanced concepts but the thing that most people get stuck on the thing that holds them back is understanding a logic about the what I call the recipe or the instructions for your computer so if you enjoyed this video as always I would appreciate a like by the way guys do you want to get more content from me if you want to get more than I actually put on this YouTube channel I highly recommend joining my free Facebook group on that Facebook group I try to put a lot of high quality content on there I try to new kitty spammers that come in so if you're interested in that I will leave a link in the description below that you can join and yeah that's about all I have for today so thank you as always for watching and [Music]

Channel: Andy Sterkowitz

Views: 496,686

Keywords: self taught programmer, self taught software developer, learning to code, computer science, software engineer, software engineering, software development, computer programming, programming, software developer, andy sterkowitz, self-taught software developer, code, learn to code, self taught web developer, self-taught programmer, how to get a programming job, programming job without degree

Id: sYjEzOIa5JI

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 26 2020