Hello fellow devs!
I am relatively new to the dev world and find myself to be a slow learner. The only thing keeping me committed and growing (despite my snail-like pace) is my love for web-dev and design and the small breakthroughs I experience from time to time (and possibly sheer stubbornness).
That being said I am trying to compile a small go-to article for the best ways to learn. I know they vary from person to person but I'm interested in hearing all the ways other people learn new languages and concepts.
How do YOU learn? Do you have a system? Do you dive right in? do you read a lot first? Start with crash courses?
Let me know with a comment or message!
Top comments (7)
My method of learning is very practical. I "just do it".
Somehow I don't retain a lot of knowledge by reading, I have to use it in practice for it "to stick".
It's always been very weird in highly-theoretical topics like, for example, geometry. It's not something you need a lot, at least I don't. Reading the formulas and repeating them over and over in my head did nothing for me in school. Until I used those very formulas to solve problems. Then it somehow stuck.
It's the same with, for example, a JavaScript framework. Reading about it doesn't help me at all, until I install it and make a few apps, even if they are totally brainless, without any real function.
I guess my brain has some sort of garbage collector that cleans up stuff I don't use frequently :D
Thanks this is very helpful! I find I'm the same way although I think my brains garbage collector is a little bit of an over achiever
My approach is usually, in case it is a completely new topic, to start with reading to get the basic (kind of "how things are done here").
But then it is the same for me as well: Reading only gets me so far, if I want it to stick I either have to do it myself or explain it to someone.
What also gives me a lot of new insights is reading other code from real applications/libraries (not just tutorial code). Open Source is great for this.
As I said here dev.to/lepinekong/figma-plugin-api... I've been very busy building a tool and it's this very purpose : help slow learners but even when you're a professional you have a lot to learn so actually eveybody is on the same boat as you.
I don't have time to explain yet because it's very big but hold on I'll write an article on dev.to as soon as possible on that problem and solutions I propose ;)
Looking forward to this! I'll keep an eye out for that article
As others have pointed out, learn by working on a project is the best. Would like to share this great youtube video by Web Dev Simplified if you decided go for it. All the best! =)
Build projects and google everything. when you do it enough times you'll stop googling it and you'll just know it.
That's my experience at least as a self-thought full stack developer
also once you learn a language like Python or Javascript you can basically read or at least understand basic concept's of other programming languages vary easily