What’s the most effective way to learn programming?

The most effective way to learn programming is to follow a routine religiously. That’s the secret sauce. That simple. In fact, you can skip the rest of this post if you already have a routine.

If you don’t have a routine, what routine should you follow? The answer to this question depends on who you ask. The short answer is, it varies from person to person. Which means you need to find your routine.

A lot of factors contribute to finding a learning routine. Some factors include your mindset, the amount of time you are willing to invest, your experience, and so on.

I have compiled the following routine which I followed when I was new to programming. Take a look at it.

• Read books on the languages you want to learn. Whenever I learn a new technology, be it a framework or a programming language, I always start out by looking for a book. When you are learning a programming language, you must first learn the syntax. Then make yourself familiar with the standard library.
• Select a language you want to master. Move on to books related to idioms in that language. (This is one of the ways to master a language.)
• Read books on algorithms. Once you are acquainted with an algorithm. You can pretty much use it in any general purpose programming language. Algorithms and data structures are important to manipulate data.
• Read code written by others. This helps you develop your own coding style and learn techniques that you don’t find in books. Over the years, I have learnt so many concepts from Open Source projects, which I would have not discovered in books.
• Practice. This is the most important step. You may know the theory, but without practice you are going nowhere. After all, practice makes a man perfect.
• Start a mini project. Write small programs that solve common problems. This gives you the experience that is essential. You encounter real life problems a programmer comes across in his/her day-to-day life.
• Contribute to Open Source projects.

I started programming when I was 13 years old. My learning routine has evolved with time. I am 20 years old now. For example, now I go through a video course before I jump into a book. This helps me understand the concepts in depth.

Like I said, learning routines vary from person to person, including the sources of knowledge. Some people may find video course more comfortable than books. Others may find a combination of both more effective (I belong to this category, but I took my time to get there). As long as you make progress, it does not really matter.

Remember, it takes time and patience to find the best routine that suites you.

Cheers.