Hi Reader,

This week I want to share my learning from 12 rules to learn to code by Dr. Angela Yu.

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1. Trick your Brain with the 20 min Rule

• No brain will perceive a 20-min task as a lot of effort and you end you tricking your brain to take advantage of your time.

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2. Code for a Purpose

• Follow only those tutorials that make something, anything.
• Working on your project/ ideas is difficult but it also brings the biggest improvement in your coding ability.

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3. There is no “perfect language to Learn”

• All that matter is what you are trying to do with that language.
• Programming concepts like loop, conditionals, functions, etc are the same. The difference is mostly syntactical.
• Decide on the task that you are trying to accomplish, then pick the best tool for that.

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4. Understand what you are writing

• If any tutorial doesn’t explain the code. Then leave it.
• You will be better served by building a better foundation.
• Increase the speed if you are comfortable with the subjects or else slow down if you are unfamiliar.

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5. It’s OK to not know

• Software engineers have the largest population of imposter syndrome sufferers.
• The skill that most employers look for when recruiting is the ability to think.
• Information is losing value, the ability to think is the stock to buy.
• The skill you need to home is in asking good questions and understanding the answer.

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6. Be a copycat

• Lacking an idea for the project? Be a copycat make tic-tac-toe, card games, etc. You will figure out how to do things.

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7. Be accountable

• Show your work.
• Peer learning, feedbacks are good practice.
• Only what’s measured can be improved.

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8. Keep learning

• Programming keeps evolving, keep re-inventing yourself.

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9. Play football

• Codeless, think more.

10. Get a mentor

• Getting a good teacher can lead to massive improvement in your ability, all within a few hours.
• A good mentor doesn’t solve your problems, rather they practice the Socratic method of asking a good question that gets you to think of yourself.

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11. Get into Habit of Chunking

• Break each module down even further.
• Break the problem into solvable chunks.

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12. Break someone else’s code

Never copy-paste code that you don’t understand.

Then what to do?

Step 1: Copy-paste into your program.

Step 2: Make sure it’s functioning properly.

Step 3: Delete the copy-paste code line by line.

Step 4: Each time you delete, check what’s broken.

Step 5: Test your assumptions against the outcome.

Step 6: Swap some of the lines around.

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Explore open source, Github. Code something, learn something, make something today.

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Wishing you happing coding and learning :))

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Regards,

Basanta.

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