Bio and Publications

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

How to Learn

A recent question.
i came up with two options.
 1.  building skills 1 (+ other references)... then algorithms & data
structures.... then your books 2 & 3

or

 2.  your three books 1,2 & 3... then algo & ds

kindly help me decide so i can start soon. 

I have two pieces of advice.

First.  Programming is a language skill.  Just like English.  If you can't get the English right, the odds of getting Python, Java, HTML or SQL right is considerably reduced.  Please, please, please take more care in grammar, syntax and punctuation.  Otherwise, your future as a programmer doesn't look very good.  For example, the personal pronoun is spelled "I".  In the 20th century, we spell out "and"; we stopped writing "&" as a stand-in for the Latin "et" centuries ago.  Also, ellipses ("...") shouldn't be used except when eliding part of a quote.  Clarity and precision actually matter.

Second, and more relevant, your two choices don't really amount to a significant difference.  If you're waiting around for advice, you're wasting your time.  Both sequences are good ideas. It's more important to get started than it is to carefully choose the precise and exact course of study. Just start doing something immediately.

Learning to program is a life-long exercise. There will always be more to learn. Start as soon as you can. The exact choices don't matter.  Why?  Because, eventually, you'll read all of those books plus  many, many others.

Spend less time waiting for advice and more time studying.





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