How I Would Learn To Code If I Wasn't An Idiot

[Music] how would I learn to code if I could start over this is a question I ask myself every day and it looks like I'm not alone here it took me around 2 years to learn to code where I didn't need tutorials anymore or well I didn't need them as much I could turn on some music and just code but I'm pretty stupid I'm not the brightest one would say I have zero IQ now during those 2 years I made a lot of mistakes when I was learning to code a lot of mistakes mistakes that

I could have easily avoided I could have saved hours days and honestly I could have saved years I wasted time on a lot of things I didn't need to know and I think a lot of people have this problem because programming is huge there's a lot of things you could study but what if I could restart what would I do differently with the knowledge I have today that's what I'm going to explain in this video and I hope my advice will help you out so you don't waste time like I did so one of the

first things I would do differently and this may sound weird to some of you is I would create a list of resources to learn programming and to catch up on some tech news because there's always something happening in Tech these resources could be articles blogs newsletters YouTube channels anything that has useful information on programming I would put it in the list because as long as you're consuming something about programming you're going to get better but that's a lot of work it would take a while to create this list and find the right resources which is

why I'm excited to share this website that already does the work for you and that's today's sponsor daily dodev daily dodev is a free platform that helps you stay up to dat with everything happening in programming it's only for developers and it's free free let me repeat free over 1 million developers use it to keep track of everything that's happening in Tech so new Frameworks languages tools news controversies you name it combine it with their browser extension and you got yourself an amazing resource and you can also personalize it you tell it what you're interested

in maybe you're learning JavaScript python react or you just want to catch up on some tech news just select those options on daily. dev and your feed will now only have articles and tutorials about those topics you only see content that's relevant to what you want to learn about and while you're reading you can discuss and network with other developers in the comments or join squads focused on specific topics you're interested in now if you're too lazy to visit daily dodev everyday you can add it as a browser extension and once you do that every

time you open a new tab you'll get useful programming information right there so if you'd like to try out daily dodev you can use my link in the description now the first thing I would do if I was learning to code again before we even start worrying about the code is having a goal yeah pretty simple and straightforward you're going to notice that a lot in this video having goal is a cheat code it helps you focus and it guides you without a clear goal you're going to get off track and waste time how do

I know because that's exactly what I did yeah I was really stupid so if I was you and I was learning to code again I'd want to have a goal now this could be very specific for example your goal could be I want to work as a full stack developer your goal could also be something broad something like I want to learn how to make video games but your goal can't be too broad if your goal was to learn to code that's not very helpful is it it's too broad of a goal because how do

you know if you achieved it does learning to code mean writing hello world does it mean you made your first program with I don't know a thousand lines of code does it mean making videos teaching people how to code when you don't know how to code yourself wait a minute who made the script what does learn to code mean to you now if you have an idea then guess what genius I just tricked you into thinking of your actual goal you're welcome ah yes unfortunately we have to pick a programming language and this language will

decide your entire person personality so uh think carefully because there's a lot of programming languages and there's a lot of opinions about each language now when I first started learning to code I actually picked Python and this is one of the few decisions I made that was not a mistake why because python is a popular language and it's beginner friendly it really helped me get started some people have different opinions where they suggest C and C++ because you'll get to learn Concepts like data types pointers memory management and it'll be easier to transition from C

and C++ to another language because of all those Concepts you learned and because you suffered using those languages and I think they're wrong no I'm just kidding it works for some people but not me you're just going to have to try it for yourself but I think this time around what I would do if I was learning to code again is I would try to use my goal to determine the language remember that goal you thought of earlier like literally 30 seconds ago yeah it's actually pretty important your goal can help you figure out what

programming language you should pick let's say your goal was web development look for languages that do web development if you want to do game development look for game development languages pretty simple honestly this is pretty common sense I don't know why you're watching this video If I Was learning to code again my goal would probably be to become a web developer SL software engineer this means I would unfortunately have to learn HTML CSS and JavaScript if this isn't your goal you better go figure it out cuz that's not my problem this is my video this

is how I would learn to code some of you might not have a goal and that's fine maybe you're not a sweaty tryhard like most people in this field and you just wanted to explore programming that's fine fair enough in that case my advice for a programming language is pick a popular and beginner friendly language the reason I say this is because if a language is popular then there's a lot of resources to learn the language plus if it's beginner friendly you're going to have an easier time learning and the easier it is the less

likely you're going to quit because you're going to feel like such a smart person because how easy the language is now the programming languages I consider popular and beginner friendly are probably Python and JavaScript oh my God here we go again what do you want me to say he python is basically English and JavaScript it's JavaScript there's a reason why everyone recommends these languages they're the most beginner friendly languages out there there's a lot of high quality resources to learn these languages you can use them for a lot of things a lot of companies use

both of these languages there's really not many cons to this and if you're one of those people that are like oh this is not real programming I don't yeah so um I recommend python or JavaScript as your first language if you don't have a goal I think they'd be a good starting point it'll give you a good idea of what programming is like if you do have a goal do some research on how to achieve your goal and use the programming language that will get you there feel free to use chat gbt to help you

now once you pick your language stick to the one language please there's this thing that a lot of beginners struggle with and I struggled with it when I first started learning to code well honestly I still struggle with it today shiny object syndrome it's basically when you get distracted from something else and you drop everything that you were doing and this happens a lot in programming because let's say you're learning Python and then suddenly you see some cool JavaScript projects on YouTube now you want to learn JavaScript and when you're just getting comfortable with JavaScript

someone tells you rust is the future bro and now you just want to learn rust that's shiny object syndrome and let me tell you something it's a trap before you know it you're juggling like five different programming languages and guess what you suck at all of them look I get it you're new to programming you don't know what you're doing but here's what nobody tells you no matter what programming language you pick you're going to learn the same thing whatever programming language you pick you're going to have to learn these fundamentals variables Loops functions conditionals

arrays every single programming language uses these Concepts you're going to have to learn these so make sure you learn them well now if I was learning to code today I would learn these fundamentals but there's another thing I would also learn early on Version Control with get and GitHub now I know get and GitHub sound boring but trust me please learning get and GitHub early is going to save you from so many headaches and unfortunately you're going to need to know it when you start programming with other people or when you program professionally if you

make it that far it's not even that complicated there's only a few commands you really need to know at first get add it adds the files pretty straightforward get commit it'll save your changes and you'll add a message to it and get push where you upload your code to GitHub and it saves it that's it for now if you need something else then just Google it or ask chat jpt I don't need to hold your hand you know what to do I'm going to be honest with you finding information about programming is pretty hard when

you're just getting started when I first started learning to code I obviously didn't know a lot of the lingo and jar in so it was really hard to find the right information I was overwhelmed with options YouTube tutorials books horses it's pretty overwhelming now which one's the best my videos obviously the truth is there's no one siiz fits-all solution there's no definitive way to learn programming people have different learning styles and goals and that calls for different approaches but this is a video on what I would do today so let me tell you what resources

I would personally use now remember my goal is to be a full stack developer or software engineer so if you don't want to do that these res resources might not be helpful to you you're going to have to do your own research I'm sorry now if I was starting over today one resource I would definitely rely on is Road map. sh this isn't sponsored I genuinely think it's an amazing resource Road map. sh is basically a guide that shows you what you need to learn and in what order if you want to be a web

developer here's your path backend developer here's what you need to know they've got road maps for basically every position and they keep adding new road maps plus they have like an AI road map generator which is pretty good I would recommend it they're awesome now another resource I I would definitely use documentation yeah it's pretty boring and straightforward now I know it sounds boring and everybody says this but trust me there's an alarming amount of beginners who don't know how to read documentation and I'm not going to lie it's pretty crazy but I'll be honest

when I first started I avoided documentation like the plague I'd watch 3 hours of tutorials instead of spending 15 minutes reading documentation don't be like me please oh and if we're talking about resources there's this newsletter called sloth bites written by this cool guy named the coding sloth I'm just saying if I was learning to code again I would definitely subscribe to sloth [Music] by projects fun kind of depends on what you make yeah I'm starting to understand why it took me this long to learn to code if I was learning to code again the

moment I learn the fundamentals I would start building projects ASAP as soon as you can and I know what you're thinking but I don't know enough yet I'm not ready I need to watch more tutorials no you don't look you're never going to feel 100% ready that's just how it is that's what programming is in a nutshell you're never going to feel ready for whatever you're doing now if you want some project ideas I have a juicy video giving you 20 ideas if you don't want to watch that I understand but I just don't like

you for project ideas think of something you'd find useful and if you still can't think of anything copy something and if you don't know what to copy then ask AI to give you project ideas actually I'll do you one better make a project that gives you project ideas oh my God I'm so smart why didn't I think of this sooner oh and if you wanted to create a project for your resume here's a little tip look at job postings for whatever position positions that you want and read the description and look at the technologies that

they're using and create projects using those Technologies pretty simple and straightforward yeah that's what I would do projects are pretty simple just build yourself some basic projects and move up to more advanced ones or slowly turn your basic project into a more advanced one as long as you're working on a project you're going to be learning how to code and that's what matters and with enough projects you'll be ready for jobs and internships are pretty simple if you listen to all my tips so you created your goal you found your programming language you learned the

fundament and virsion control and you created some Advanced projects you should definitely be ready to start applying to jobs and internships and you'll most likely get your first interview oh