How to learn a new [programming language, framework, library] in 4 points?

When you want learn a new programming language or a new framework, the first question is: How to learn? Where can i study?

With this post, I want to show you how I study a new technology (frontend, but is possibile to apply this method also for other jobs).

For example, if I'll want to learn ReactJS?

1. Official Documentation

In my opinion, the first thing to do is to study the official documentation.
The official documentation is good to learn the syntax base of the language to have a strong base and to undestand the main concepts.

In this case, the documentation of ReactJS is very good.

The official documentation

Before to start a new course or read another resources, I advice you to read the all documentation.

2. Start a course

After you will read the documentation, you can change your job position on LinkedIn in "Senior Frontend Developer"... Ahah :)
The second step, for me, is to start a course to learn better.

Now the question is: Wich course can I choice? and Where?

In the last years one of the best platform to learn a new technology is udemy.com.

For example, if you try to search "ReactJS" in Udemy.com you can find 482 results.

Courses ReactJS: https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=reactjs

What are the strengths?

• Price: in general the courses are to expensive
• A lot of languages: you can find courses in lot of languages (italian, english, spanish, ecc...)
• In a lot of case the courses are taught by people who use those technologies for work
• You can watch the video and practice in the meantime

Advice: find a short course where you can learn and improve your knowledge, prevents the long courses (in udemy.com you can find courses of 40 hours).

Another advice is to watch the videos preview of the course. With those video, you can understand if the course is good for you.

3. Start a project

One of the best methods to learn a new technology is to start a new project.

What project?

For example, in ReactJS you can find a short lists of examples in official documentation: https://reactjs.org/community/examples.html

In this link, you can find a previews of the apps and the GIT repositorys. To improve and practice try to replicate one of those app.

4. (last) Others points of view

When you are finish a course or a project and you are confident with the syntax and the main concepts, two methods to improve more your knowledge is:

1. Follow on Social (for example in LinkedIn) people that works with that technology of lot of years (in this case: Senior Frontend Developer in ReactJS, ReactJS tutors).
2. Read, read and more read. To discover new tips, follow the hashtag (for example in this case #reactjs) on site like medium.com, dev.to, and so.

Conclusion

I hope to help you with these tips.
Following these steps, I learned lot of things and new technology.

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