Self-taught programmers and code school students have one goal-LEARN code! In this podcast we break down figuring out how you learn best and pose the question, what are you willing to invest in your own learnings?
Self-taught programmers and code school students have one goal-LEARN code! In this podcast we break down figuring out how you learn best and pose the question, what are you willing to invest in your own learnings?
Have a specific question about learning code? Ask it here for us to answer on the show!
Today, we are going to talk about learning. What does it take to learn well? To learn quickly? As we think about entering into technology, learning computer programming, how do we learn best?
Welcome to Effectively Human, where we discuss how to close a knowledge gap between technology and the people who use it. Each week your host, Morgan Lopes, will share real life practical tools on how to bridge the gap less than.
A [00:00:30] question was submitted recently, which was, what is the best way to learn coding fast? And answering that question, I really want to divide it into three parts. The first thing that we want to think about is, what does success actually look like when it comes to learning? Why are we doing it? What is a successful outcome as we seek to learn a new skill, a new programming language, [00:01:00] how do we define success?
The next thing that I would break into is how do you personally learn best? Everyone is very different. All of us have different learning styles, different methodologies and approaches, different ways that information resonates with us and different ways that we receive information best. So we want to consider how do we personally learn best?
And then finally, how much are you willing to invest in that fast accelerated learning. Investment can look like time [00:01:30] and money like energy focus. But how much are you willing to invest in order to get the fastest learning experience? So let's jump into what does success look like?
Fastest path to learning will often vary depending on your desired outcome.
For example, imagine you want to learn Spanish. You could learn to read Spanish. You could learn to speak Spanish. You could learn to speak Spanish so well that you are capable of teaching that to others. You can also learn all three. [00:02:00] Each is an element of learning Spanish, but the potential and the desired outcomes will vary considerably depending on the path that you're pursuing. As you seek to become proficient, which outcome are you looking for?
If you want to be an incredible software engineer, the skills and the speed and the depth to which you'll learn something is very different than if you desire to lead a team of software engineers and be more of a people manager. Maybe you find yourself merely wanting a job in tech. That is the goal, whatever it takes to get a job in tech as fast as possible. [00:02:30] Well fortunately, in that regard, there are a lot of different jobs that you could get: A project manager, a project owner, a UX designer, UI designer, a software engineer, a support engineer, a lot of different roles. And so as you think about what it takes to learn quickly, first identify what a successful outcome is for you.
The next, how do you personally learn best? Do you need an instructor? Do you prefer to read? Do you prefer to listen? Do you prefer recorded content? Do you want to live and chopped up in real time? [00:03:00] Are individual learning styles contribute directly to the confidence that we have when learning to the speed at which we're able to learn? After many years of searching for the way that I learn best, I have realized I am an auditory learner. If I can hear something, I am way more likely to retain that information and if I have to only read it for myself.
The way that is manifested in school was I knew I could get pretty good grades if I just showed up to class. Sure, sometimes I would do homework and those kind of things, but the value [00:03:30] of me being in class, hearing the information taught, was way more valuable than spending hours and hours at home by myself reading more independently.
The classes I struggled with the most were ones where the teacher would stand up and lecture during group time and then at home would assign work that was completely different information. Everyone has a unique learning style, and as we think about how we want to learn quickly and learn well, figuring out how we learn best is a key part of that today. [00:04:00] There are so many different forms of content, of information, of learning. As we think about proficiency and skill and speed in our learning process, we have to figure out how we learn best.
The last part of how quickly we can learn to code is all about how much we are willing to invest. As I refer to investment, I'm talking about time, energy, money, resources. All of these things can be invested to learn even faster.
My brother recently learned Japanese. He is in the United [00:04:30] States Marine Corps and he was being sent overseas to go to a special school in Japan for officers and for 12 months, every day for eight hours, he would sit across the table from a Japanese tutor, one on one instruction, curated learning, continually revising the curriculum for how he learns best. It was incredible. He learned Japanese very, very fast. But that was an expensive way to learn. The United States government invested a lot of money in [00:05:00] helping him learn Japanese very, very quickly. For many of us, we aren't in that same position. We have limited resources, limited time. Perhaps we have a day job that we have to go to to make money and provide for ourselves and for our family. And so time is more limited. All of these factors contribute to how fast we are able to learn computer programming. Learning, especially when trying to increase the speed, is complicated. All of these factors contribute to the quality, the speed, the information [00:05:30] that we actually retain. Depending on your desired results, the inputs will definitely vary.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to ways of learning to code faster. If you have a question, I would invite you to submit it at effectivelyhuman.tech. Again, that's effectivelyhuman.tech. Check us out online and submit your questions about transitioning into technology until next time.
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