Recently I started to learn Go programming language. At the beginning I felt confident about myself and my skills to jump directly to tutorials provided by them yet I was proved wrong after the first full program that I tried to write! Here you can find the story behind the program and a few steps and thought to not get in the same Rabbit hole like me.

🏗️ Have a semi-structure.

Having a semi structured plan would help you to learn effectively, the plan could be like setting one hour a day to learn or even having a goal for a week. A strict plan could demotivate you and make you heavy, yet a loose or no-plan would not let you move forward, you need to have something in between. Check this navy advice on the same topic.

✨ Learn the basics

Learning the basics from the beginning could sound boring and obvious, yet investing the time on it, would help you to make a better program in the future and understand the why, what and how of the code you write. It’s always great to start from the basics and move forward.

✔️ The language before framework

Before starting on a framework or any tool you need for programming, it would be better to do the work you need purely in the language of that framework, this way you will understand the framework better and you will be able to move faster with them and have a straight learning path.

👍 Learning a framework is easier than languages!

If you are aware of the programming languages and it’s tricks, you will be able to learn the frameworks fastly and in a short time. This happens since you are aware of the basics and took enough time to understand them and the languages themselves.

🏎️ Explore different technologies.

Exploring new and different technologies over time will help you to get a different perspective and thoughts on programming. Do spend some time on that even if you have invested heavily on one language because of your work. This will help you to be a better programmer and creative one over time. No need to be a guru in all of them, but it’s great to be aware of their syntax and logic.

📓Practice Vs. theories.

Learning the theory behind programs or even languages is always advice yet without practice you won’t fully understand it. By checking the learning pyramid you can see how much you could understand of a new skill you try to learn. In programming you need to be aware of algorithms and be able to code them at the same time. The more you get exposed to different algorithms the more you will be able to create new algorithms and better you will be.

🕰️ Patience and consistency

Learning itself take time and effort, that’s why you need to be always patient and consistent of your work, you can be aware of the forgetting curve to have the best for you and your case, but never give up and be sure that there is always people around you who would help you at this journey and take your hand.

At the end, learning a new programming language or framework is a tough goal and you need to be aware of that from the beginning, try to be patient and pick the best that suits you and everything will be great from that on. Happy Hacking

Sidenote: this article wrote as answert to the question: what’s the differnce between self-learning and bootcamps or university? Why it’s easy to learn there, why it was easy for me to learn new frameworks (in javascript) fastly!