How to ACTUALLY LEARN using programming tutorials!

hey there what's going on I'm Andy I'm a self-taught programmer in this video I'm going to cover how to get the most out of programming tutorials right because you are probably out there the reason you're watching this because you saw the title this video you're like I'm watching tutorials right now and I feel like not quite getting the most out of it either I'm not retaining a lot of the information or I just feel like I don't know why I'm watching it so I'm gonna cover that in this video and I highly recommend by the way if you haven't before to check out my video here on tutorial purgatory editorial purgatory is something I see a lot with people who I talk to and it's this concept where you're watching and tutorials endlessly like over and over again and you don't feel like you're progressing anywhere with your knowledge you don't feel like you're getting any closer to your goal of becoming a software developer so highly recommend watching that before you watch this because I'm going to cover a lot of concepts from that now if you're new here and you have no idea who I am I'm an Easter quits I'm a self-taught programmer but I'm also a coach and mentor to everyday people who are looking to become programmers in this field so they're looking to teach themselves a skills and also get a first job so I'm a mentor in that regard so I highly recommend if you're interested in that content to subscribe below but also make sure to hit the bell icon to get notifications anytime I put out a new video so without any further ado let's dive into my tips for really getting the most out of tutorials the first tip that I have is make sure you know why you're using this tutorial right so whatever it's a book whether it's the udemy course even if it's a I don't know what there's plenty of courses what do you call those MOOCs out there if you are going to take any of those it's really important to understand where that plays in your goals right so if you are trying to get a job in six months or a year and you're trying to learn JavaScript first well where does this come into play where does this tutorial come into play so are you trying to learn the basics okay that's great that's awesome so this tutorial is trying to you're just trying to learn the basics so you know from there that if this tutorial starts getting into the advanced parts of JavaScript or some programming language that you're trying to learn it might actually be a good time to quit that tutorial because you realize that that's a far above what you're trying to do or maybe your goal is to learn enough to build your first simple small little website or application great well you know that if you're half the tutorial and you want to just put it on pause and start building the application you can do that or and you can come back to it later but the the biggest pitfall that I've seen is that a lot of people will buy this tutorial though circling through it and the information doesn't get retained because they don't know what they're trying to do with that information in other words that tutorial doesn't have activities it doesn't have little exercises to make sure that informations retain so the person is just they're just learning facts it's like learning history and just learning like on you know December 1st 1895 this guy signed this piece of paper that you know did whatever and it's like there's no there's no emphasis on like what the meaning of the overall picture is so before you get into tutorial try to have your best understanding about where this plays of rolling things if you're trying to learn a framework or something like that or a library or just some higher level concept great but where does that apply to what you're doing because if you know if you watched my videos before I'm all about building projects right like you learn what you need to learn but build projects over and over and over again to really cement that knowledge in so make sure you know what this tutorial is doing for you and that way you have a higher chance of having that tutorial be effective in some way shape or form the next tip that I have for you is to avoid cramming at all costs so when you get your tutorial your book in from Amazon you you're like sitting there and you're like you see this like the nice cover it's pretty or that I don't know that gets the logo for the course it's just like so exciting like oh man I'm gonna learn how to do this new framework or something like that I'm so excited and you think that when you finish it that it's gonna be like a like you're levelling up like in a role-playing game like you level up 79 your 79 level programmer and it's so exciting and I love it it's like my favorite things even myself when I get a new programming book I'm like so excited however you there's a tendency to think that like once you've finished that resource that you suddenly can level up and you now know something you didn't know before whereas actually when you complete a tutorial or complete a book it's actually about just progressing your knowledge so there's no value in cramming so there's really like is almost little to no value in trying to finish a one of those resources as quickly as possible the way the memory with your memory works for most people unless you have some sort of like extra skill in memory or something like that for most people learning to consolidate this short-term memories and long-term memories takes time and it takes sort of progressive exposure over time to really take these concepts synthesize them because you have to figure out okay you can learn the syntax of a programming language but you also have to synthesize the information and connect it with other things that you're learning at a higher level so it's you can't really do it with cramming so really just here's what I would say the last thing I would say about this is remember that c4 the matrix where neo is going to learn martial arts they're gonna teach him how to fight instead of having him sit in a classroom for eight weeks or 16 weeks or a year two years or three years or five years to become an expert in fighting what they just do is they stick that node or that electrode and in the back of his brain and they download martial arts as a skill into his brain and now he can fight people at an expert level and I think that that's like the sort of the myth that people have about learning resources out there is that if I just read this thing that I'll finally know react or a fun you know angular I'll finally know Python all the way through and it's not the case a programming tutorial is meant to advance your knowledge you're just gonna progress your knowledge in some small way and that's all you can view it as at the end of the day programming is a lifelong endeavor you'll never know everything you'll constantly be learning and that's really what the role of any resources it's to an advanced your knowledge so remember that going in so don't try to cram it all in take it in stride push yourself to learn as much as you can but don't overdo it and try to get in eight hours every single day or stay up till 5:00 in the morning cuz you just want to get one more page in after a you a bad time at that point you're not gonna remember anything another tip here is to actually complete the damn tutorial with an asterisk I would say though cuz you should also know when to quit now why do I say this so I've spoken to many many people at this point about their experience in learning to code and from time to time I will come in contact with someone who's like yeah I've got 20 tutorials and they're you know all dumped I thought or again whatever programming languages are trying to learn them like oh that's so cool you've got 20 tutorials you must have an abundance of information you must have an abundance of skill with this and they go no actually you know I'm having trouble I haven't really finished all of those tutorials you know because the first one at the guy his voice was really raspy and I couldn't follow it or the second one the girl she just has like a really annoying voice so the third one didn't have any activities or exercises of the fourth one was too slow and the fifth one is too fast and all sudden you start picking up with this pattern where the person is not about the tutorials maybe the tutorials weren't perfect maybe they weren't you know giving that much information in a high quality way but what you begin to see is that the person is avoiding the hard work of sticking with something when things get difficult or when you start running into issues and and you have to use that grit and determination to get through it right and I think this is this is symptomatic of the world we live in right like we live in a world now where novel stimulation is a click away right like the computer back there has endless stimulation waiting for me if I turn around and go to youtube I can go to websites watch cat videos you know this feel I think everyone's heard that at this point and so we trained our brains in a lot of ways to become very complacent very possibly like passivity because we can get again like a novel stimulation that way know when you are watching when you go from that environment where you're constantly being stimulated and then you go to try to learn something that requires you to often feel uncomfortable to just put it bluntly you're gonna have to really change your brain you have to change your brain is going to have to rewire itself in a lot of ways to become more pleasured by novel things actual novel things like learning and so for you you may be one of those people and if that's the case you need to really practice completing things even if completing that thing is not gonna be good for you like even if you should have quit a while ago sometimes for you you may have to really develop that grit and only you know that I can't tell you that because look sometimes you are watching tutorial that becomes very advanced when you were trying to learn something that is just basic and you need to know when to quit like I was saying before if you know why you're taking that tutorial or why you're using that learning resource then it's you can more easily identify whether you should be ten yuan or whether you should quit the next piece of advice for tutorial is to make sure you get the most out of it is to always be taking action in other words don't be passive tutorials and resources by their very nature are passive you're sitting there and you're sort of consuming if it a good tutorial they will have exercises they will have activities to really make sure that you're cementing in your learning but even then you still have to constantly be taking action it's like if you're trying to learn tennis and I'm terrible at tennis by the way if the only played a few times my life I'm so bad at it I'm a decent athlete but tennis just whoops my butt and what I noticed with tennis is a very like a fine-tuned motor skill sport and if you were just to try to like watch someone with maybe they're just trying to explain to you like how to hit a forehand or a server a backhand it can be helpful they could be very helpful they can tell you how to turn over the racket a certain point where you should hit it on the racket but it's totally different from you actually sitting there and actually hitting a tennis ball in a certain manner over and over and over again till those those pathways in your brain get built up and you could just do it without thinking and so a tutorial is meant to give you that conceptual knowledge about how to hit the ball but only way that you're going to really learn it is to actually go out there and do it on your own so what I would recommend here is at the very least if you're watching something or you're reading a book take notes at the very least like that's the least you can do is take notes the next step out from there is to code along so say the instructor is building an application or they're working with little samples of code do the same thing and while you're doing that you can add little things here and there now the next step up from that is to actually pause or take a break from that tutorial and to build something on your own with that knowledge or to just build up on what they were building before in some meaningful way that's completely different and that's really where you're gonna take what they're teaching you and you're going to really formulate like long-term memories and and really cement this into your learning because if you're just gonna consume it if you're just gonna sit back and okay oh that's interesting that's interesting it's all just gonna be interesting and you're not gonna know how to use it but when you're forced to use it its first of all it's gonna be hard there's gonna be you're gonna struggle we have to go back to your notes but it's really going to be there for the next time when you try to learn something it's going to come back to you very quickly so take action don't be passive I really the last tip I have for you as far as tutorials goes don't try to learn everything it is can be really tempting to say look I want to learn every single concept everything a fundamental concept related to getting my first shop and so that can lead you down rabbit holes that can take months or potentially even years to really figure out and look my general advice with getting your first job as a software developer is to make it as efficient as possible there's no guarantee that a year from now six months from now or even five years from now that this market will be as hot as it is that you're going to be able to just teach yourself how to do this so my recommendation is to do it quickly don't spend two or three years doing it and so some people will have said that letter just like I'm gonna learn every single thing from you know machine language all the way on up to the higher level languages and I want to learn every single concept to do with the internet I want to know networking I want to know you know every operating system and it's like dude that's great that's awesome I love that I'm I'm an avid learner I love to learn the meat or like what you say the marrow of all these concepts but unfortunately you could be wasting time and wasting time is not fun because you never get time back you never that's one resource we can never get back so I highly recommend instead of trying to understand everything is just to keep a running tab of what you don't know so as you're learning so you're taking a learning tutorial you're reading a book and there's some concept you just don't know about write it down say like okay for later I want to learn this concept or I have these questions about that concept maybe you need to stop because you can't proceed before you understand that but other concepts you know you could probably proceed because you understand it enough you get the you open understand by the context of how it's used you can understand it so my recommendation is to keep running tab of things you don't know revisit them when it's appropriate but don't try to understand everything don't make that your excuse don't make that your like productive excuse why you can't you know move forward and progress based on where you are now so that's all I've got for you those are the tips I have to make sure you're efficient and you know absorbing as much information as possible when you are watching tutorials I hope it's been helpful but other than that I highly recommend if you enjoy this video and you want to get more of my content to join my facebook group in my facebook group it's really high-quality concept by the way I don't allow spam in that group I post in there regularly I also have some life QA events do you want to ask me questions that's a good place to do it so highly recommend joining by going to a nice turquoise calm forward-slash group other than that guys thank you so much for watching and peace out [Music]

Channel: Andy Sterkowitz

Views: 65,153

Rating: 4.9499106 out of 5

Keywords: programming tutorial, how to become a programmer, how to become a software developer, how to become a software engineer, self-taught programmer, self-taught software developer, programming, web development, software development, how to learn programming for beginners, how to learn programming, how to learn to code, learn to code, how to learn code, computer programming courses

Id: afop7R5h5vw

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 22 2019