stop doing tutorials. Learn to code like this...

so if i was learning to code again from scratch i'd do it very differently i would take the musical approach let me show you what i mean [Music] [Music] so i think there are quite a lot of similarities between learning a musical instrument and learning to code and i'm going to tell you what they are and i think if you apply them to your learning to code you'll learn much more quickly much more thoroughly and you may even have a better chance of getting a job so keep watching when you're learning a musical instrument you're normally doing it because there's a song that you want to play or a piece of music that you want to play and if you try to learn to code and you don't have something in mind that you want to achieve that's going to make it really hard because you're not going to have any measure of progress and when things get really difficult and they will you're not going to have that motivation to keep you going it's like when you're learning the piano you have to learn a load of scales and arpeggios and nobody wants to learn a musical instrument just to learn those but if you have some other goal in mind you learn the technical stuff because you can apply it to the thing that you actually want to do so what's your motivation is it an app that you want to make or a website that you want to make or do you want to play around with a raspberry pi and make a little robot is there a machine learning model that you want to apply to something have that as your motivation just have something in mind that you want to achieve that will really help you [Music] you can't learn a musical instrument just by reading a book i mean that's pretty obvious but it's true of coding too there are some great coding books available but just reading them isn't enough what really counts when you're learning an instrument is time at the keyboard or time spent practicing that instrument and it's exactly the same with coding time spent writing code and working out what it's doing and why it works the way it does the same is true with online tutorials there are some great online tutorials and you can gather a lot of information from them but the learning doesn't take place just by following through what someone else is doing if i were to follow through someone playing a piece of the piano and just copy what they did once i'd finished doing that i couldn't say that i'd learnt that piece and it's exactly the same with the projects that you follow in a tutorial they're very good for showing you what can be done but the learning takes place again at the keyboard you come away from the tutorial and you pick apart what's happened and you practice it until you understand [Music] projects are absolutely essential they're like the songs and the pieces that you would learn if you were learning a musical instrument you know your repertoire and there are several reasons why they're really important the first i've already touched on is motivation they'll give you a reason to learn they will also force you to learn different aspects of coding that you haven't yet encountered because you'll want to apply something or do something in a project that you haven't done before so that's really important if you pick the right projects like picking the right repertoire they'll build on each other so things that you've learned in the first project will help you with the second project which will help you with the third project and so on so they they create a a learning path for you without you having to think too much about that but even more important than that is a good set of projects will help you to get a job in fact if you don't have a computer science degree and you don't have any projects your chance of getting a job is much much lower imagine if you were going for a job as a pianist and you were asked you know what's in your repertoire what songs can you play and you said well i can't play any songs but i've done some online tutorials and i've read a book on playing the piano no one's going to really take you seriously but if you're asked what songs you can play and you're able to demonstrate that you can play the songs that you've learned really well you've got a much better chance of getting a job and it's exactly the same with projects they will show potential employers what you're capable of they're also useful talking points you know when you're in an interview and you can explain why you've done things a certain way and what you've learned from each project when it comes to choosing projects it's better to have a higher number of projects that are quite challenging but not too difficult you know so that you can actually complete them rather than choosing one massive project that's so ambitious you're never going to be able to finish it going back to the piano analogy you know it'd be better to have a repertoire of half a dozen or a dozen songs that you can play and that are varying varying levels of difficulty rather than trying to play i don't know rachmaninoff's third piano concerto which you know you're unlikely to be able to do [Music] aren't i always saying the way to learn something is to do it and that's why i want to introduce you to today's sponsor brilliant now brilliant is an interactive online stem learning platform where you can learn you know all the stuff that you're interested in so computer science and data science that's programming and algorithms and data structures and statistics and probability but you learn it interactively and i think that's what makes brilliant unique i've been using brilliant for years long before they reached out to me to sponsor the channel so thank you for getting in touch brilliant what i really like about brilliant is the interactive problem solving because it really ensures that you understand the subject because you've been asked questions about it and you've had to apply that knowledge to different scenarios brilliant has a huge catalogue of courses and it's constantly expanding so there's bound to be something there for you it's particularly strong in data science and computer science so go and take a look at those to get started go to brilliant.org forward slash python programmer or just click on the link in the description and the first 200 people to sign up will also get 20 off brilliant annual premium subscription

Channel: Python Programmer

Views: 101,881

Keywords: self taught programmer, self taught web developer, self taught developer, self taught software engineer, programmer, web developer, developer, software engineer, programming, web development, development, software engineering, learn to code, how to code, code, coding, web dev, self taught, web, learn to code fast, learn programming, learn coding fast, learn code

Id: MJOQKcoSYDI

Length: 6min 49sec (409 seconds)

Published: Mon May 09 2022