Hi, and welcome back to another episode. My name is Patrick Shyu
and I am the tech lead. Our topic today is how to learn to code. And there's really only one skill that you need to have to learn to code. And generally people either
have this skill or not. And that is really the ability
to just sit at the computer for many hours at a time. All engineers know that there's
something called the zone, where they basically
just sit at a computer, uninterrupted for long periods of time, and that's how they're
able to put together complex thoughts, chained together many pieces of logic, and basically put a program together. And this is a habit that a
lot of people don't have, like they sit down for
10 minutes at a time, they don't really have a desk maybe, they're like watching TV as
they're using their laptop and then checking their
phones all the time, and then they gotta get
up and pick a cupcake, and then go walk the dog, and then they gotta go drive out and do an errand, go shopping, come back, and then they gotta go
meet up with their friends. And each time they have maybe 10, 20 minutes at the computer, and it's just not enough time
to really sit down and focus. So if you can get into the habit of saying you're just gonna block out say, four hours in the evening, grab a cup of tea, and then really just sit down and focus on staring at the computer for this amount of time, then I think you'll be
able to develop that habit. And it's even better if you can block off like an entire afternoon and just give a whole day to it. And that is how you will
basically be able to learn. And basically software engineering is just all about learning
over and over again, it's kind of an interesting career because it's not like
being a lawyer or doctor where over time, your experience just builds and builds, and then when you're like a
60-year-old doctor or lawyer, you're just so experienced and you can try to
choose amounts of money. Now for software engineering, when you become like a 60-year-old guy, you're probably outdated. Now, this isn't really
necessarily about ageism, it's more about many people
just decide to stagnate and they stop learning. If you can continue learning and keeping up with new technology as it changes over the many years, then you're gonna be good generally. So this is really about
developing the ability to learn. And that ability to learn needs to be done over long periods of time sitting in front of the computer. And one tip I have is, I will usually just get
some really good music. it will make me want to
sit down at the computer so I can listen to that music. And then I'll just listen to it. And then I'll just focus on
whatever it is I'm doing. And also say that a lot of normal people
don't have the ability to just sit down for many hours at a time and stare at a computer, like, I'm not even sure if it's really something
healthy to be doing. Usually it's the people at school who don't have a lot of friends, who don't get invited to the cool parties, and so then they just sit
at home by themselves, and they've got nothing
better to do except to learn, basically get good at computer coding. So like, if you're a
kind of a popular person, or you've got a lot of events and cool things going on in your life, then you're probably going to
find it to be very difficult to just force yourself to just sit at home and ignore all those other events. For me, I'm the type of person who
really enjoys being at home and not doing a lot of things. Like given the choice, I might just sit at home for like, a whole month, and that might go out once a month. You know, I just, I don't feel a need to
be going out shopping and like going to the mall every day. Like, it's just not
that interesting to me. I remember when I was in high school, I wasn't the smartest kid. Like I was pretty smart. But there were these other kids who were much smarter than me. And they would always
be getting like A pluses on all the exams. And then we all went to college and since it was kind
of trendy at the time to apply to computer science, a lot of them did that. And basically, by the end of the first year, all of them dropped out. And I was like the only person
left from my high school who was actually studying
computer science and the program. That first class is
called the weeder class, because it's intentionally
made to be difficult and just filter out a lot of students, and basically give them bad grades, so they're forced to drop out. Meanwhile, for me, I just really enjoyed that
course I got like A plus in it. And I think the reason is that a lot of these people
were probably very good that normal studying, like they could read a book, they could memorize it, they could do their homework, but they may not have had that culture of sitting in front of a computer
for long periods of time, and that was something that,
at least for me, I had, I had been actually coding
since elementary school. And meanwhile, I think a lot of these other kids, they really had no clue what they're getting themselves into. They thought it was going to be like studying physics or chemistry or biology or something like that. But computer science is
a whole different culture and requires that computer culture. Now when you actually get into
the computer science courses, it may surprise you to hear that the professors don't actually teach you any programming languages at all. So language syntax, like how to code in Python, C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP, or Objective C, all of that stuff, they don't really, no one, nobody teaches you that. So if you were thinking that
when you get into college, somebody is actually going to sit down and teach you all these languages, that's not the case. No one ever held any
engineer's hand like that. Everybody who learned how to code generally had to do it by themselves. And they're all self-taught in that sense. So don't wait to be taught by somebody. And that's just how it is. And you just gotta keep
self-teaching yourself. So if you don't have that
self-teaching culture, that initiative, then you need to be able to develop that. Okay, now hold on, lemme just clarify that, there are some courses that
can teach you these languages if you actually need the help, but most four-year degree college programs will not be teaching you that. These are things that you may learn in, say high school courses or
community college courses. And I think a lot of
people maybe think that, well, the people who actually gone
to a computer science program and maybe like you didn't, for example, maybe you're thinking that they were actually taught this stuff, no one was taught this stuff. What people are actually
taught in these courses is the supposed fundamentals
which are like algorithms, data structures, how operating systems and compilers work, databases. But probably the only course
that you really need to know are like data structures and algorithms. And, you can keep in mind that each of these courses is
just basically one textbook. So if you were to read
two to three textbooks, you'll basically be covered, and that'll get you going. And in reality, a lot of computer science, you don't really need to know
these crazy data structures and algorithms, like they'll tell you how
to implement a hash table, but in reality, no one really implements a hash table, they just use it. And basically, if you were to do the algorithms course, I understand time space analysis, like how efficient these
data structures are, then you're gonna be
able to use them fine. And there's not that much
holding you back then, like, so I think you can get very far even teaching yourself on your own. Although, that's not to say that a
college degree is useless, like a college degree is
actually incredibly valuable, I think, simply because it's so difficult
for students to stand out. The competition is so tough
that having that college degree just elevates you one level up, and just makes everything
so much easier for you to land your first job, compared to having nothing and trying to prove to people that you may be qualified, even though there's tons of other people who may have some degree, who's competing for that same job. Basically, after that, I think like, you have to ask yourself why you're learning to code. And there could be a variety of goals. Maybe you want to build
a project for yourself, maybe you're just curious. But if your goal is to
eventually get a job as a software engineer in some company, then I would say that
your goal is going to be to get something on your resume. And the best way to do that is probably just to make
some personal projects. As you're starting out, it's gonna be difficult
to get anyone to hire you. So think about some cool
projects that you can make. And make that your goal to make it, and then just try to create it, and as you're doing it, you can learn that new language, learn some fundamentals. And when you finish it, you can put that project on your resume, and then you make sure you can be able to explain about whatever impact it had. You know, like, if you could have a website
or something to show it, that would be pretty nice. And if you could get a few
users that would be even better. As for what track to go into, I might recommend web development as one way to quickly get going, like you learned HTML, JavaScript, maybe either PHP or Python as a back end language and they'll quickly get you going. And that's really all you need to be able to start creating
complete web applications, and these projects, you can basically put on your
resume and get you started. Another option I might
recommend is mobile development, which is pretty trendy nowadays. And I would say that in the past, iOS development has been seen as trendy, but in recent times, Android development has
actually been skyrocketing. Like, if you check the charts, Android growth is growing really fast. So I think that the demand
for Android developers should be going up. Anyway, I think that pretty much captures what I'm trying to say, which is that no one's really there to hold your hand throughout this. It's not like when you start a job, you get a pair of programmer and together you're
programming with a mentor and people are watching your screen and going through each step together. I mean, there are few jobs that actually do a lot
of pair programming, but most of the jobs that I've seen, they just give you access to the codebase. And there's usually a
lot of crazy technology and languages in there that even experienced engineers may not really be familiar with, and they just need to
start digging through and teaching themselves
how to get through it all. What it really takes is you gotta really just be able to pour yourself
like a cup of tea or a coffee and sit down for a few hours, and just really try to
learn to code by yourself. Even in industry, there's even less documentation than what you see online usually, like the code might be messy, there may be really poor documentation. And people just need to
have that thinker mindset and just go in there and
dig in and take a look. You know, that's the culture. That's how it is, there's no true one correct
way to do any of this. I would recommend that as a beginner, you can probably even ignore the whole algorithm
fundamental track at first, you might get into eventually, but like if you were to pick up a book on how to do web development in PHP, or Python, or how to do Android or iOS development, and then just go through that book it'll probably get you set up and you really just need to be willing to put in the time and effort to do it. And I think that many times I'll basically just see people and just looking at the way they act, like how social, may be if people don't seem
like the type of person who would be able to sit down and just really study a computer, like I can already tell that they don't really have that
culture of the programmer. Like, you need to be able
to develop that culture and get into the zone, sit down for many hours at a time. And I think that's the one skill that a lot of people probably
need to hone more on, if they want to get serious into coding. So that'll do it for this episode. Lemme know what you think
in the comments below, and I will see you next time. Give it a like and subscribe, bye.
