Learning · 12 recordsLearn to code

Almost everyone who fails at this fails in the same place: the stretch after the tutorials where you have to build something without instructions. This plans for that explicitly and puts a small real project on the far side of it.

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The whole plan, before you install it

Goal

Build and finish something without a tutorial Month 6

A small real project, on the far side of the stretch where people quit.

Learn the basics Month 3

One language, chosen once and stuck with.

  • Pick one language and stop comparing languagesDo firstDay 3
  • Work through one course to the endMonth 3
  • Rewrite one exercise from memory, without the tutorialDo firstMonth 3

Build without instructions Month 6

The stretch where nearly everyone stops.

  • Choose something small, useful to me, and boringDo firstMonth 3
  • Get an ugly version workingMonth 5
  • Finish it and put it somewhereMonth 6

Routines

  • Write code for 30 minutesdaily
  • Read somebody else's codeweekly
Skills
  • ProgrammingBeginner → Intermediate

    Rename this to the language. Logged hours are what make the middle months visible when nothing feels like progress.

✦ Questions

Learn to code, answered.

Almost any of the common ones, chosen once and then stuck with. The choice matters far less than not switching, and switching is the most reliable way to spend six months permanently at the beginner stage.
At the gap between finishing tutorials and building something unaided, where the material stops telling you what to do next. This plan names that stretch and puts a deliberately small project on the other side of it.
This plan is dated at six months to a small finished project, on a daily practice routine. That is unhurried on purpose — the aim is something that still exists at the end rather than a fast start that stops in month two.
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