I was like a fish out of water without my laptop by my side.

I needed a new computer battery, so I left my MacBook at the Apple store. I was hoping that they’d simply swap out the old battery with a new one on the spot.

That was wishful thinking. “Your computer should be ready within three days,” I was told. I’m sure my eyes bulged open and my face turned white when I heard that response.

How does a programmer program without a computer for three days?!

The answer: by hand. So that’s what I did.

I settled…

You’ve probably heard of deliberate practice: an intentional and informed type of practice that’s used to enhance performance.[1] It means entering your practice with purpose, rather than mindlessly going through the motions. Setting specific goals, receiving feedback, and getting outside of your comfort zone are some of the core parts of deliberate practice.

The popularity around deliberate practice is rightly earned: research across a variety of fields has shown its effectiveness.[1]

But something is missing from the deliberate practice conversation: how can you apply deliberate practice to programming?

I answer this question in this blog post. I offer three ways…

Programming is a fantastic skill to develop. But, as a self-taught programmer, I’ve found the learning process unnecessarily ambiguous and complex. I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out what to learn (and when to learn it), which resources to use, and how to learn a vast number of technical topics.

So I’ve put together five lessons I’ve learned (so far) from my own journey. I hope the ideas and resources in each lesson will set you up for a more direct route for learning and getting better at programming.

1. Learn the fundamentals of programming.

One piece of advice shaped my entire learning trajectory as…

Something about Julia Child caught my attention. This American author, teacher, and television personality is famous for bringing French cooking to America. Indeed, mastering the French cuisine and having such a remarkable cooking career is impressive.

But what’s equally impressive is that Child found her “life’s calling” — French cooking — when she enrolled as a student at the Le Cordon Bleu school of cooking at age 37. In other words, Child wasn’t a French cooking child prodigy. Rather, she learned the art and craft of French cooking later in life. …

There’s so much new and dense technical information coming at you when you begin learning to program. How do you learn and retain it all?

That’s a question I’ve asked myself many times on my own programming journey. In an attempt to find an answer, I’ve experimented with many learning tactics along the way. However one stands out among the rest. I call it the apply first, study second approach.

If you’re looking for an efficient and effective way to learn to program, I suggest you give it a try.

Learning in Action

Apply first, study second means attempt the problem first. The…

It’s sometimes thought that short, “clever” code is the aim when writing programs. However, shorter isn’t necessarily better. Neither is “clever” code. You know, code that reads like a cryptic puzzle, which causes you to spend an unnecessary amount of time trying to figure out.

We shouldn’t aim for short, terse code. We shouldn’t intentionally make code complex or confusing. Instead, the best type of writing, be it prose or code, is clear and meaningful. This should be our aim.

That’s because it’s the easiest for the reader to understand. “Clarity is not the same as brevity,” writes Brian Kernighan…

This is the fourth and last big idea in my series on programming effectively, which is based on my new learning tool, Programmer’s Pyramid. Each article contains one big idea and one or more ways to apply it. In case you missed the last one, you can read it here.

We’re often in such a rush to move on to the next new problem or program. But hold on for a minute.

Just because you’ve solved a problem doesn’t mean you’ve learned from it. …

This is the third article in a four-part series on programming effectively, which is based on my new learning tool, Programmer’s Pyramid. Each article contains one big idea and one or more ways to apply it. In case you missed the last one, you can read it here.

The first two ideas in this series on learning to program effectively covered what to focus on and how to go about it.

Today I pick up where these two themes left off by raising this question: now that you’ve got a roadmap in place, how can you tell if you’re making…