Learning to code is much more than acquiring information

Learning is a very complex process. In a very simplistic perspective a lot of people tend to think that the most important part of the process is acquiring information. This can eventually lead to a lot of frustrations and loss of self-confidence when somebody that wants to learn a new skill starts by emphasizing the information acquisition part. Most formal educational systems tend to emphasize this part and that’s why we hear a lot of companies around the world complaining that colleges and universities often don’t prepare students for the real job market.

Let’s take a look at coding. There is a common misconception that coding is mostly for math geniuses which is fueled by colleges and universities around the world. While math is surely important for computer programming, coding is also a creative process because each developer kind of shapes the world around him/her by the software he/she creates. So there are a lot of non-mathematical skills that can make or break a good developer. And this skills mostly can’t be obtained only by acquiring information. That’s why when learning to code the information acquisition part is less important than a few other things. And the most important one of them is consistent practice!

This is something heavily underrated in today’s world. And this requires a lot of motivation and perseverance seen that the results are not visible immediately. If you work out 1 hour today, will you see any improvement? No! If you do the same tomorrow, will you see any improvement? No! Will you ever see improvement? Well, not if you only compare between two very close points in time! Consistent practice always offers you results that you most probably won’t notice and therefore you also won’t notice the improvement.

This applies also when it comes to coding. If you start learning by reading a 500 page book that was probably recommended to you by somebody, you will usually not come very far. The information you’ll acquire at page 10 will most probably be forgotten by the time you reach page 50. And believe me, there is a lot of cool stuff that you can build by yourself and practice coding. You really need to acquire some very basic information and you can already start practicing. In fact, for each hour spent acquiring information, you should invest five times more in practice. Good mentors will always find ways to keep you busy.

By consistently practicing the information you learned (even if the amount of information is small) you will find yourself in a position when you’ll notice that you actually are able to deliver more then you would expect. That’s when you’ll have your “a-ha” moment which will give you even more determination to move forward.

At a certain point you’ll also realize that you are actually able to write better software than somebody else that just finished the 500 pages coding book. And guess who would companies hire as a software developer? A person that finished a 500 page book and is able to theoretically reproduce a lot of that content or a person that might not be able to theoretically reproduce that content but is able to practically demonstrate it?

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