The Best Way to Learn Programming

There are no easy ways, but there are better ways to do things.

Recently, I read something called “The aggregation of marginal gains” from Atomic Habits by James Clear, which means searching for tiny margins of improvement in everything you do.

Well then, let’s see how you can improve how you learn programming. What’s the best way to learn programming?

Watching tutorials on a specific topic on YouTube?

Reading articles?

Blog posts?

Books?

Or is it just simply coding 24x7?

Well, the best way to learn programming is, teaching and building Projects. I said it right.

Let’s talk about how can “teaching” help you learn programming a lot faster…

Teaching Programming:

A lot of you might have already heard about this method of learning –

Learning by teaching others.

Even studies have been done to prove this method works. Sounds a little crazy, but recall an incident in school or college where you couldn’t understand a specific topic or subject, you asked your friend who scores well in that subject and he explained it to you and you understood.

You might be wondering why he scores better than you, though both of you are putting a lot of effort into learning?

The reason for his success is because he has understood the topic to a level, where he could teach it to others. That’s the level of understanding you need.

How can I learn to get to that level in programming?

Well, it’s the same concept. If you learn something new, teach it to someone else. That would help you retain what you learned for a very long time and also solve misconceptions you had.

How do you teach? 🤔

Well, this had been a problem for many of us for a very long time. I’ve heard and knew about this study on how teaching can help you in learning but I’ve always thought, how do I teach and to whom?

I thought I must teach my friends at school or college, etc. But the reality is, you don’t need to.

You can literally teach to anyone around the world, and make yourself better in the subject.

You can write an article on Medium, shoot a video for YouTube, tutor someone online, or even do pair programming…

Building Projects:

Concepts are easy to forget unless you apply them in real life. Building projects are kinda more related to programming.

Learned about how to create objects in JavaScript? Learned how to fetch data from an API?

Create a small project, upload your code to GitHub, write an article, make a post or make a video and publish (be open to critics.)

How can I apply this in my day-to-day life?

Whenever you learn something new in programming or really about anything, teach it to a friend (probably someone who would be interested in it. 😅), record a video, make a post on Instagram, or at least write an article on Medium about it.