Curiosity
The greats love to learn. They love to grow. They never lose their holy curiosity.
Look at Michael Jordan. He has wasn’t the best basketball player in his family. He says that his big brother was more skilled than him.
But he was curious.
Education is the game changer. When you invest in your learning, you can see around corners, you collapse the timeline, you figure out how the pros do it. So guess what? You can do it.
Mentors
There are a lot of advices online from people. Great programmers will tell you to start programming by writing a simple game.
They will say things like “You want to program, just start by writing a simple game like Tetris or Tik-tak-Toe.”
If you have ever tried to write Tetris, it is not simple.
Another person will tell you, “Start with C++. That is what they use in the industry. Especially in the gaming community, that is what they use to write gaming engines.”
I have no problem with C++ but to begin with it, is madness.
You have to look for the right mentors according to where you are at in your coding journey.
Persistence
I will take persistence over talent all day.
Back then in my IT classes, there were those who were just good with coding. They just seemed to get it. Over the years though, the tide shifted. Those who persisted got better at it and ultimately landed great jobs.
I’ll take persistence over talent all day. Imagine you are building a video gamer character. You are told to choose between two characters. One with great talents and the other one just won’t quit. Who would you choose?
I would pick the character that never quits every time.
Because talent does not save you from getting punched in the face.
Talent will help and amplify you, but it will allow you to quit without persistence. I have seen this many times as a basketball player too. The most talented team getting beaten by the most persistent. The guys that keep playing no matter the odds.
Persistence is the thing that will get you through all the storms. It is the thing that will bring you back again and again.
Only then will you start to see the patterns in coding. Then, you can start to dodge those punches. Because you were already hit by them. Those coding errors, you learn to Jiu-Jitsu them.
But you can’t dodge those punches moving forward if you never get off the ground.
A talented man can take a hit. Persistence, you can’t stop. You can acquire the skill of persistence. That is ultimately the main accomplishment. Because talent is not competency.
Experience and knowing what you are doing make you competent. And that is what will make you win.
The basics
Coding has only about eight main concepts. You hit them and you are done. The concepts are universal across languages. For those who know multiple languages, they know this is true.
Your first language will be hard, the second and the third, you will start to see patterns.
By the fourth or fifth language, you will be given a project and you can even do it in a weekend.
The first thing you need to do though when you are coding is start with the basics. Write out the concepts first, then convert them to code later. If you are lost in coding, it is almost because you shouldn’t be coding yet. Write out the concepts first, then convert them to code later.
It is the same concept as architecture when they start the construction of a building. They come up with the designs first, then from the designs they can come up with the building.
Take a pen and paper if you have to. Visualize the project you are about to build. Have a rough idea before you code.
And you will be way ahead of the project.
Courses
Did I take some pill to make me a JavaScript wizard overnight? It is straightforward.
Let me take you back to when English was being taught all over the world.
It all started with the British wanting to spread English all over the world. To do this, they created 850 words that anyone could learn and understand.
From these 850 words, you could construct sentences from them.
The same goes for coding. There are some concepts that when you learn, you can code almost any project in this world. Any app in this world.
To learn them, you need to take courses that will teach you these concepts. And then, you will be using these concepts throughout your programming life.
👉 If you need help learning to code, I just relaunched my course The Art of Web Development. It’s $50 for a limited time( normally $600). Sign up at https://karlgusta.gumroad.com/l/mwiky/yi82b5q
That’s it. Happy coding!
