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Harsh Gaur
Harsh Gaur

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Learning how to learn new things 🤔

Often we start learning new technology and find ourself in a place where we think we are not moving ahead. This is a short and simple guide to how I learned things quickly and effectively.

Now before saying anything else, I would like to put forward that this is just my point of view on the learning methodology and this is what I do. For you these techniques may or may not work but I am sure they would surely bring some difference in the way you learn.

Getting all that aside, let me tell you what principles I follow to learn new things. Now, I don't have a fancy name or abbreviation for the technique but here are the steps I follow:

Start with the history

Often we forget why did we start learning a thing and why do we need to learn a particular technology. For some it might be professional requirements and for others it can be just for fun. In any case I would suggest you to define your motive and go a little bit on the history of the technology to understand why it came into existence.

Dive into the basics

Once you know what to do and why to do it, you can dive into the technology itself. Learn the basics through the official documentation of the technology and try to understand how stuff works. You can always go for the video tutorials but I feel for the basics, the youtube videos are a waste of time.

Do a small hands on

Code out whatever you have learn and try to imitate whatever you have learned though the documentation or the tutorials.

Do a verbal or written knowledge test

Now once you are done with the basics, try to test out yourselves by creating a short trivia for yourself. You can always try building any short application out of the language or the tech you have learned. Don't go for a big application right now, rather make small modular applications.

Fix the issues

Try to understand your language gaps and then work on them.

Build something

It's now time to bring an application that required solid understanding of the technology. Suppose you are learning React, then after all the above mentioned steps, just try to build an application such as E-commerce website.

Ask someone to review or do knowledge transfer

It is very important to ask from someone to review your project and give you suggestions or hints on how you could improve. You can also demonstrate your projects on linkedIn and ask people to use your app and critique it.

Now, you must repeat step 5-7 as much as you can and this is how you can learn a new tech effectively. Let me know if you liked my method and share it with more people so that they could also have a look at it.

Happy coding!!!

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