Teaching yourself something isn’t and has never been easy. If you don’t have a clear guide, you end up wasting your valuable time on things you wouldn’t give much time or will rarely be useful in future. Becoming a self-taught programmer requires even more dedication, patience and hard work. What makes it different for programmers is that there are tons of tutorials on YouTube, million blog posts on internet, and hundred thousands of course on these course websites like Udemy, pluralsight ( this wasn’t really for making it tough but now it is hard for someone new to make a better choice of which lesson to take and which one to leave out. (Which YouTube videos to watch, which websites to go to, and many other choices to take). In this blog post , we are going to show some tips that can prevent you from wasting time. Read carefully and take time to digest every point.

Before we start, you need to have basic computer knowledge like step 0, you may know how to write (don’t worry about speed), how to use the internet for searching things because your programming life will be spent on google, and other basics stuff. By reaching this post, I know that this step is checked. Lucky you!

1.Take a decision what you want to be (Front-end, back-end or full-stack developer)

The first step to becoming a self-taught programmer without wasting time is to choose your niche. You can choose to be a front end developer (who works on interfaces, these cool colors, backgrounds, fancy fonts, and animations you see every day, everywhere. That is a great job done by front end developers. Languages such as HTML, CSS and the main one JAVASCRIPT are used, and to simplify their work frontend developers use frameworks such as React, Vue, Angular for Javascript and Tailwind, bootstrap and many more for Css), a backend developer ( those guys who do a lot of work that is never seen by the end user like what happens when you click on sign in button on Facebook, creating APIs connecting databases, database administrators. Languages such as NODE.js, PYTHON, TYPESCRIPT, RUBY, C, C++… are used and have their frameworks as well) or you can choose to learn both front and backend (these kind of programmers are in high demand in nowadays and they have a cool name of full-stack web developers.)

My advice here is to start with Javascript so that you can do better on the front end and hit the backend with node.js before learning any other language. After deciding where you are going to put your focus, now you will have skipped a lot of stress of choosing. But wait… take your time, listen to your heart, think of what you can enjoy doing because here the power is in your oyster. Now that you took a decision let us continue.

2.Search for a road map to follow (like curriculum)

After determining what you are going to learn, front end or backend now it is time to find a road map or curriculum. There are some websites that have a good curriculum that you can follow such as freecodecamp.org, w3schools.com and many more. For these who prefer buying courses on websites like Udemy, you find there a way that your tutor chose for you. You can also search for a road map on Youtube (recommended) but the main purpose of this post is to save you a lot of hustle choosing so I recommend you to use the curriculum of freecodecamp.org to learn the basics and then shift to zero-to-mastery road map (youtube). By choosing the curriculum you now saved your mind going side by side, watching every youtube video which sometimes gives you depression.

3.Search for a channel to learn from.

Having one or two channels that you will always learn from is the main thing that is going to help you not waste time on Youtube since you already chose where to take resources from. If I knew this when I was learning programming, I would have chosen Traversy media on Youtube but here the choice is yours. ( I however can give you a tip: that channel that you watched a video on and felt like you understand everything taught with it? Use that because that is the teacher of your type) but remember that you can’t stay there if they are not giving planned contents as your road map.

4.Don’t learn and never learn a language that you don’t necessarily need or you are not going to use.

The fault that every newbie does when learning programming is taking everything said by a senior developer, every idea they got in a video on youtube or a blog post as the gospel truth. When people are saying that: this language is the best, this one sucks, it is dying,... you know what? that's them. You focus on the one you are learning, don’t shift from what you started learning because there is no useless language. So, don’t let these people ruin your courage of learning a certain language you chose and after feeling comfortable with it, don't rush to learn a new one unless you use that one. Try to get all updates on your language of choice instead of learning tons of languages you won’t even use.

5. Don’t learn a frame work if you don’t know the basics

I know learning the basics is tedious, you started learning programming because you wanted to create a certain project and now all you are learning is things that you take as stupidity (but it is not), you hear your forks talking about frameworks, how they ease life, and so on.. However, if you move to frame-works without knowing the basics, you are going to struggle and you won’t feel the good advantages of the frameworks you have been hearing of. This is because even a basic data structure, you will think it is framework’s magic and end up memorizing it which is evil in programming. Programmers think they don’t memorize things.

6.Learn by practice (create many projects)

Watching hundreds of Youtube videos, buying a Udemy course, reading thousands of posts is not going to make you a programmer if you don’t use what you learn by creating tiny or even big projects. It is a good practice to create simple projects that actually solve a simple problem to know how things work. Also try to create a complex project that will keep you focused for a long time. This will also help you learn new things ( you can search for a specific solution to a simple step but not the whole project) so if you want to not waste your time create projects).

7.Read other people’s code

Like the saying goes ‘if you want to be a master, find a master, follow a master, work like a master and become a master’. The same applies to programming, if you want to be a good programmer in a short time, find someone with expertise and ( see how he/she writes code which tools they use, which posts they read and find some time to do the same. In a short time you will find yourself writing readable codes, gaining new experience, new ideas of projects, etc. Find a mentor whom you will ask questions and he/she is willing to give you better solutions that helped him/her when they were at that stage of their career(if you want me please feel free to contact me via email). You can also join an online fora of developers where you can ask specific questions and a dedicated answer and gain friends who work in the same field as you.

These are the main things that are going to help you avoid wasting time on your way of learning how to program, remember the more you don’t waste time the more things you learn and experience so choose a niche (either front, back end or full stack) find a curriculum, find some channel to get info from, learn and understand the basics before getting into frameworks, do practice and build simple projects, read codes and contribute to open source projects and find a mentor. Remember these little progress points you are making daily will turn into something big. You only have not to stop when you get stuck and ask help online. Good luck in your journey of becoming a professional programmer.