Study Tips & Tricks

Study Habits for learning new skills: This is a fantastic list of study hacks for coding! They cover planning, execution, and practical application.

PLANNING & MINDSET:

1. Establish a Dedicated Routine & Roadmap:

Treat your learning like a job by creating a specific schedule (days, place, and time) and sticking to it.

2. Pick One Language (or Stack) and Stick With It:

Avoid the temptation to jump between languages. Learning one language thoroughly will establish the core principles that make learning all others easier later on.

3. Fail Fast, Learn Faster:

Get comfortable with failure. Errors are not setbacks; they are essential feedback that teaches you how the system actually works.

II. EXECUTION & FOCUS:

4. Practice Deep, Mono-tasking Focus:

When it's time to learn, eliminate distractions—turn off your phone, work in a quiet area, and avoid multitasking. Good concentration needs deep, focused work.

5. Use Structured Breaks for Reset:

Don't power through confusion. When you hit a wall or start feeling fatigued, take a real, intentional break. Coming back to a problem with fresh eyes often leads to breakthroughs.

6. Document Your Journey and Insights:

Keep a learning journal or log of your daily progress, noting key concepts you struggled with, how you solved problems, and moments of clarity.

III. APPLICATION & MASTERY

7. Adopt the 80/20 Rule: Start Building ASAP:

Spend 20% of your time learning concepts and 80% coding. After a brief initial tutorial (about two weeks) to grasp basics, switch your focus almost entirely to building.

8. Embrace the "Learn One, Do One, Teach One" Cycle:

After learning a concept, immediately apply it in a project (Do One) and then try to explain the concept to someone else (Teach One). Teaching is the ultimate test of understanding, forcing structure and revealing knowledge gaps.

9. Structure Your Project Journey (Guided to Solo):

First, complete three guided projects to build confidence and understand basic architecture. Then, challenge yourself with two or three solid solo projects that solve a real-world problem for your portfolio.

10. Ship It, Don't Perfect It:

The goal is to *finish and deploy** a working project, even if it's not visually perfect. A live project is infinitely more valuable than a perfect one that is perpetually unfinished.

Good Habits and Mindsets for Learning Coding Skills

Habits of successful coders:

1. Develop a Problem-Solving Mindset. Every line of code is a puzzle to solve a larger problem.

2. Learn to Program, Not Just a Language. (Understanding the underlying logic and concepts is more important than memorizing a programming language's syntax.)

3. Prioritize Understanding, Seek Help, and Read Documentation.

4. Maintain Adaptability. (Technology changes fast, so developers need to learn continuously and efficiently.)

5. Communicate clearly.

6. Be a Team Player and Work Collaboratively.

7. Use AI as your mentor or a coach.

8. Build publicly so others can see your progress and to keep yourself accountable to others.

New Ways to Look at Learning

Git

1. It is a software

2. It is installed locally on the system

3. It is a command line tool

4. It is a tool to manage different versions of edits, made to files in a Git repository

5. It provides functionalites like Version Control System source Code management

GitHub

1. It is a service

2. It is hosted on Web

3. It provides a graphical interface

4. it is a space to upload a copy of the Git repository

5. It provides funcationalities of Git like VCS, Source Code Management as well as adding few of its own features

Git? GitHub? Confused by these two sites? Here are the differences!