5 Steps To Watching Programming Tutorials The Right Way.
My thoughts, experiences, and tips.
If you've been in the programming world for a while now or you are just getting started in programming, one thing is pretty certain, we've all taken tutorials online at some point. Many of us even got into the industry by watching some tutorials and loving what we saw. It is evident that tutorials are an essential part of the programming journey, and today I'm going to be talking about five ways to ensure you're watching these tutorials the right way and getting the most value out of them.
1. Have A Goal, And Make Sure The Tutorial Helps You In Achieving It
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Being a self-taught developer, I can say this is one of the most important steps especially for beginners just getting started with programming. When I started early on in my career, I was all over the place. Programming was so exciting to me, I felt like I wanted to learn everything overnight. I would watch Youtube tutorials on different programming languages like C, Python, Javascript. I learned the basics, but I had no clue what each programming language was used for and why I was even learning it. It took me months of mindless playing around with these languages to realize I wasn't making any real progress thanks to Andrew Sterkwitz's amazing Youtube channel with lots of advice on being a self-taught programmer. He spoke extensively in one of his videos about having a clear plan while getting into programming by determining your end goal for being a programmer. Is it to build websites? or analyze data? or make video games?. Once this is defined, it would help you navigate the massive amount of learning resources out there such that you pick out only what is needed for you to accomplish your goal.
2. Be Present While Taking The Tutorial
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I know many bloggers and developers have spoken about how important it is to avoid distractions while coding. Usually, they would say, find a quiet place or get rid of your phone and other distracting devices. While these are very true and important, it is also necessary to get rid of mental distractions. It's almost impossible to focus while studying if there are other things on your mind. I know this is a difficult thing to do because we all have busy lives with so much going on sometimes. It could be work, school, kids, relationships, mental health issues, so many different things that steal our attention for most of the day. We can barely have an hour a day to spare for coding or taking a tutorial for some of us. But the good thing is an hour a day is enough to get consistent progress in programming given that you make the most of that time by being present. There has to be an extra effort towards making sure you have nothing on your mind. This means you have to make sure no tasks are conflicting with the time you set for coding. For parents, make sure the kids are okay (and probably asleep) such that you can have quality time with yourself. For foodies, make sure you got your food or smacks around so hunger or urges don't bother you. For coffee people, you guys know the drill. For those like me with no food or drinks, water is free (lol). Basically, the main takeaway here is that you have to make a conscious effort to listen and process the information properly to get the most out of any tutorial.
3. Focus On The Thought Process Rather Than The Actual Code
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This point would be for those who have been programming for a while and a little challenging for those just getting started. In my early days of programming, many times I would try to memorize the syntax of whatever language I was learning. That was before I learned googling stuff is very much legal in the programming world. It's difficult and almost impossible to memorize every syntax or every function in a programming language which is why you shouldn't bother trying. Rather, look at the code from the instructor and try to follow what he/she is doing. In other words, try to mentally convert the cryptic programming syntax algorithm to a human language algorithm. Let's see an example in javascript (the comments represent my thought process)
for (var i=1; i < 101; i++){ // loop from 1 to 100
if (i % 15 == 0) console.log("FizzBuzz"); // if i divided by 15 leaves a reminder of 0, output FizzBuzz
else if (i % 3 == 0) console.log("Fizz"); // if i divided by 3 leaves a reminder of 0, output Fizz
else if (i % 5 == 0) console.log("Buzz"); // if i divided by 5 leaves a reminder of 0, output Buzz
else console.log(i); // otherwise output i
}
It's obvious that to do the above analysis, you must have a little understanding of the basics of Javascript. The code above is the famous FizzBuzz algorithm which sources say comes up in many coding interviews. Looking at the code, it can be a bit difficult to remember every syntax in the code. It's easy to forget the semi-colons in the for loop arguments, or the "if" in "else if" or the "log" in "console.log". But if you understand the English version of the algorithm, you can quickly remember it and it would be easy to google the syntax you might forget. For example, if I forget how to "console.log" for some reason, I can remember from my English algorithm that I need to output values then I can google "how to output data in javascript". Chances are a familiar syntax will pop up.
4. Try A Different Implementation
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This would probably be scary for any developer because a developer's nightmare is to introduce a bug in their code that takes them hours to figure out. Trying a different implementation, however, can be very rewarding if everything is done right. The purpose of watching any tutorial is to learn something new, and I've heard this saying somewhere "You never can truly understand something until u can break it and repair it yourself". I believe this applies very much to coding, if you can take code, try something different, fix any bugs that you may have introduced and get the program to work as intended before, then you have truly understood the code.
5. Take Notes Where Possible
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With so many practical programming courses out there, it is easy for newbies to see no need for taking notes which is understandable. I rarely take notes myself but some months ago I tried getting into the habit of taking a few notes while going through a tutorial and I realize, it is a pretty helpful skill. I found that I listen better when I'm trying to take notes and that helps me understand the lessons better. Another rather obvious reason for taking notes would be that they serve as a self-made reference for the future. They can also serve as useful information for blog posts for those into content creation. Though taking notes feels boring for me, I have found it can be really helpful and I hope you give it a try.
So there you have it, five tips to help you get more out of watching tutorials. These are some of the things I do in my day-to-day life to make sure my coding sessions are very effective. Of course not every point might be useful to you but my goal with this post was to share my thoughts with you and hope you try out one of these tips. Please leave a comment with your thoughts or your personal tips and also don't forget to share this post with your coding buddies.
Thanks for taking out time to read this blog post. I really hope it was helpful to you. My name is Timo Heman, I'm a 19-year-old self-taught web developer from Cameroon. I mostly work with JavaScript and PHP at the moment. This is my very first tech post and I'm hoping this is the beginning of a new journey of giving back to the amazing tech community out there through my posts. I hope you find my content enlightening and I hope to have you back next time. Have a wonderful day.