blog
date: 2019-08-17
summary: Study Strategy
Find resources that work for your learning style.
- Videos, books, pdfs, blogs.
- Seek out expert courses on Udacity, Udemy, Coursera, SitePoint, Tutsplus, etc.
- Find a teacher that you can relate to and dive into the topic.
Get conversant with HELLO WORLD in that topic.
- Make repos and push your code as you work the course.
- Make folders that match the chapters/sections/modules, so you can come back to it for working code, (this technique put me over the top in a technical challenge to win a job, while I was under time pressure. The code I saved was there to refresh my mind, even though I did not go super deep first time around).
IMPROVISE a little on the topic, build something that works.
- Tie the topics (coding this thing to talk to that thing) together in the most basic way that works.
Divide and conquer, Hello World.
- There are going to be defined sections of the tech stack you are dealing with.
- Together they look too daunting.
- Separate them and get basic hello world versions working.
Start a list of questions you can't solve immediately.
- These are your talking points with senior devs at lunch, hackathons or coding groups.
- Example: I've tied this thing to that thing and they "talk" so far, but I cannot see how to implement "this other thing". Do you have any ideas I could pursue?
- This shows them you've done some work and are not just asking for tech support like a whining end user. It also touches their creative mind and hopefully the nurturing instinct to help you out a bit.
The best thing you can do is make a list of 20 ways to attack this, then start doing that list.
- It will put your creative mind and energy into action.
- Fight for a foothold on each technical topic, however small, it is a victory.
Skim through documentation and tables of contents first, getting the big picture of how things are put together.
- Then get specific about making "hello world" work for that topic.
- If you end up with 3 or 4 courses to do, dig in and code everything the instructor codes.
- Don't do this for 20 topics, but do it for the top 3.
Periodically go back and skim the table of contents or master list of topics.
- For the top 3 and for the entire 20, skim and get big picture
- Keep your mind threading on both the big picture, as well as getting "hello world" to work.
Many seemingly difficult technical topics boil down to some setup, boilerplate, configuration and specific syntax to tie things together.
- The big picture thinking allows you to ask simple questions, which get you started.
- Tutorials and videos are often a good way to just get your sense of balance in a particular topic.
Work like it all depends on you, getting something basic to work.
- Then have the sense and humility to ask for help based on your work.
- Finally, if you do these things and still "fail", you have at least demonstrated the grit and determination to work at it, which is an irresistible quality that is hard to find.