Learn to do by doing

When learning something new in software development, don't make the mistake of just reading through the material and thinking that you understand it. The best way to learn and remember what you have learned is to implement it. Write a program incorporating the concepts you have learnt.

Watch the video below where I explain this in more detail.

Transcript

When learning something new, whether it is a new technology, programming language, a development tool or anything really, it is important to practice or implement what you have learnt.

It doesn’t help just reading an article or a tutorial about something and then thinking that you know it. You will never really know what you’ve learnt until you put it to use.

Take horse riding for example. You can go watch videos about how to ride a horse or read articles about it and theoretically learn everything there is to know about how to ride a horse. But until you actually get on a horse’s back and start riding and maybe fall of a few times, and learning how to use your reins and seat properly, you won’t be able to say that you can ride.

Same goes for software development. There is a huge difference between head knowledge and practical knowledge. The perfect win/win situation is to have both.

Let me tell you a story of where I was a number of years ago. I got to the stage in my development journey where I was complacent and just happily writing and maintaining programs with the little bit that I knew, but not really putting in much effort to learn more or keep up to date with the industry trends.

When I looked again, I realised that I was so far behind and the ‘cutting-edge’ software that I was working with is not so cutting edge anymore and if I wanted to get a new job or new projects, I needed to drastically upskill.

I went onto UpWork and looked for the technologies, languages and tools that clients where requesting the most. I made a list of the ones that I wanted to learn and brush up on first, then I thought of an idea of an app that I wanted to write using all the new technologies that I wanted to learn and started designing the app and learning the tech while writing the app.

I had read lots of tutorials, and did a few courses to give me a boost and fast track my learning a bit. But ultimately the thing that taught me the most of how to use the tech I was learning, was the project I was writing.

In the normal course of writing an application you will often get to a point where there is something you don’t know or need to learn to be able to finish the project. I ended up learning everything that was on my list, plus some other skills that I didn’t even know I needed.

Speaking from experience, take an hour a day and start learning and implementing what you have learnt.