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Overviewing my personal tips for learning programming. The lecture I delivered on December 20th 2013 in HIT.
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Tips for LearningProgrammingHaim MichaelDecember 20th, 2013
All logos, trade marks and brand names used in this presentation belong to the respective owners.
You can find the video clip at http://youtu.be/N1XHWcFBa0E.
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© Haim Michael
Table of ContentLi fe M
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m● The English Barrier● Self Learning Capabilities● Writing Code is The Only Way● Be Ready for Class● Effective Time Management● The Main Technical Website● Understand Everything● Use Code Samples● Community Help● Learn Programming Languages● Questions & Answers
© Haim Michael
The English Barrier● Overcome the English barrier. The up-to-date professional training
material is available in English. If you still have problems with
reading technical material in English you must overcome this
difficulty. The sooner the better.
● You cannot expect finding translations for each and every technical
document. You can find translation for very few of them only.
● It isn’t about learning English. The technical language is very
limited. You just need to improve your reading skills. It isn’t difficult
as it might seem in the beginning.
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© Haim Michael
Self Learning Capabilities● You should learn how to find answers by searching the
web, learn how to read technical documents in an
effective way and learn how learn new material by
reading books and practice their code samples.
● Practice your self-learning skills by learning new
technologies every day. If you don't put the required time
for learning new technologies you will stay behind. You
will become a dinosaur.
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Writing Code is The Only Way● Just as you cannot learn swimming without getting into
the water it is impossible to learn programming without
writing code.
● The more code you write the more understanding you
get. Learning a programming language without writing
code doesn’t work.
● If you are getting into difficulties writing your first
programs try to start with running code samples.
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© Haim Michael
Be Ready for Class● If you are taking a programming course make sure you
come ready to the meetings.
● Make sure you read the material in advance. Make sure you
run some code samples in advance. The more prepared
you come the more understanding you will get during the
lesson.
● Going over the material before each and every meeting will
save you time at home. Come ready with questions and
exploit your teacher!
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Effective Time Management● We are all limited in our time. Unless you learn how to
manage your time in an effective way you won’t be able to
keep the pace.
● Make sure you have friends from whom you can get
immediate assistance.
● If you find yourself in a loop wasting time on specific
programming assignments it might be very useful to take a
break, move forward with other exercises (maybe a more
fundamental ones) and return back at a later time.
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© Haim Michael
Main Technical Website● Each and every technology has its main technical website. The .NET
framework has the msdn.microsoft.com website, Java has the
java.sun.com website, PHP has the www.php.net website, Scala has the
www.scala-lang.org website and so on.
● Each programming language usually has its own official documentation
pages. Java has the well known API, .NET has the well known MSDN and
so on.
● Make sure you are familiar with the main technical website as well as the
documentation. You will find them highly useful.
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Understand Everything● Insist on understanding everything there is to understand. Exploit your
teacher. Raise the questions. The deeper you get the better
understanding you achieve.
● Many programming languages and many programming platforms have
their own professional certification exams. Learning for those exams and
taking them afterwards will usually assist you with getting the best
understanding one can get.
● When getting error messages avoid the temptation for trying a quick fix.
Insist on reading the error message and understanding it.
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Use Code Samples● Code samples can assist us learning new programming
languages.
● Introducing small changes into the code watching whether the
output is the one you expect will allow you to verify your
understanding.
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© Haim Michael
Community Help● In most cases, searching google will yield results fetched
from various community help websites, such as
www.stackoverflow.com and others.
● In most cases, the question you have was already asked
by others.
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© Haim Michael
Learn Programming Languages
● The more programming languages you learn you will
enrich yourself with new programming languages
paradigms and improve your self-learning skills.
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Questions & Answers● Three courses you might find interesting include
Software Engineering in PHP
more info
Android 4.4 Java Applications Development
more info
HTML5 Cross Platform Mobile Applications
more info
● If you enjoyed my lecture please leave me a comment
at http://speakerpedia.com/speakers/life-michael.
Thanks for your time!
Haim.
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