Stop learning languages, start learning programming
Tags: programming, codenewbie, coding, learning
Published: 2023-06-22 12:24:11

We’ve all been in this situation; You just opened YouTube, and like magic, Bam. You see your timeline full with videos of a bright new shinny programming language that is the latest trend, and you immediately think of a project to build with it. You instantly get to it’s website to check out how it works and how to write _hello world_ in it.  If that’s you, I want to let you know that you are not alone.

As social creatures, we are always in search of a way in which our peers can love and accept us in the mut. Now in this social media world, we are always in search for what is trending and what others are doing so as not to be left to fall back. But the real question about this is that: Do you think that is the right approach to learn how to program??

Let’s think of this. Have you ever been talking to someone and instantly you get interrupted, when you get back to that person will you be able to continue where you left off without sometime to figure out where you were before the interruption? If you are like most people, the answer may probably be yes. We all find difficulties to get back on track after we have been interrupted. This is same when you are reading. Whenever you get interrupted when performing a task, you will always need sometime to get back on track, or you may even end up starting back from the beginning. This is why whenever you are learning a language, framework or even library and you get interrupted by the learning of another one, you end up starting from scratch or even struggling so much to get back to where you left off.

If this is the case and we know it, why do we still continue to do this thing that make us struggle so much and even stops us from properly learning?
The reason why I’m addressing this issue is that I’ve also been part of the let’s learn the new shinny thing. But let me assure you that this is a very wrong way and will take you no where (unless that you are a YouTuber that wants to just make a simple tutor about this new language). I repeat don’t learn the new thing just because it’s trending.

So what am I proposing?? My proposal here is a classic talk you may have heard several times: build projects. It’s true it’s hard. It’s true you will spend several days debugging the same code just to find out that you missed a semi-colon or you didn’t properly indent your code. That’s great!! Those pitfalls may serve you later. You may not notice, but whenever you get back in a similar bugs, it’s just going to take you some few minutes to solve it. Even if you don’t remember, just the fact that you may have seen it once will have your brain scream “But I know I’ve seen this somewhere”. Don’t judge yourself because of it; it happens to everyone. Just try to notice how you will solve it this time. 
And that my friend is a great tip of how to grow as a developer

My real proposal is that you should stick a maximum of 3 things on your learning list. Not more than, but can be lesser. The reason why I say this is that the human brain gets bored of doing the same thing repeatedly without change and challenges. That’s why I advocate for 3 things maximum. The 3 things (whether frameworks, languages or libraries) should do different things. Like right now I’m studying 3 things and all for a reason. I’m studying C programming language, Apache Kafka, and Nest Java Script. They all have projects which I’m planning to build with and that’s why I also sub-divide them into different days. They also have different priorities based on how hard they are. This makes me never feel bored and also encourages me to work harder. 

But wait. Didn’t you just say it’s not good to multi-task? 
Yeah I did. When I talk of multi-tasking I mean not you opening your editor to write some C code, and at the same time you have another editor opened to work with Nest Java Script. You may not even be using the nest Java Script editor, but I’ll advice you close it and focus exclusively on the C editor. If not you may experience what is known as content switching. Which also results in a lost of information in the brain. So one at the time and not more than 3 to learn. Bjarne Stroustroup (the creator of C++) once said “I advice all programmers to know more than one language. Whether it’s 10 or 20, the problem is that it shouldn’t be only 1”.

The real reason why most of us program is to create a solution either to a problem that we face ourselves, or one that we may have seen other people experiencing. In either case we need to focus on how to solve a problem  rather than thinking about how to learn the new trending thing that does nothing else than raise our ego and gives us a sense of belonging or superiority among our peers. 
Stop learning languages, and start programming for real!