What is a good method for learning programming?

Question

I have been studying programming for about a month now mostly using books. It's going okay but starting to slow down and the content is getting much more difficult. I don't feel like I'm really learning as much as I should be. I've seen people saying all over the internet that "the best way to learn how to code is to just code". My question to that is this...if you're a beginner, how are you supposed to know what to code if you don't really have any experience coding? Are you supposed to read a little and code a project of your own based off of what you just learned? Then read a little more, etc... Or should you just learn the very basic syntax and start making your own projects, making them harder and harder as you go(referencing material only when needed).

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Also, I'm open to any other methods that might be awesome. Thanks for your advice!

Answer 1

Doug Reehill
A. Learn by reading and reviewing code from opensource projects

B. Build something incrementally and iteratively, covering various topics.
Ex. a simple address book.
Build an in memory version - one feature at a time - listing addresses; sort them by first, last names; filtering, searching using right data structures;
Then do so using collections and libraries.
Then use file storage;
Then use a db... An rdbms and then move on to a nosql.
3. Use portals like codekata and sololens which allows you to gamify the learning. Get to see how others have solved the problem in different ways.

Answer 2

Doug Reehill
It's an interesting question.
A. Consider building small usable utilities or even mimic the popular ones like cat, more etc.

B. Learn by reading and reviewing code from opensource projects

C. Build something incrementally and iteratively, covering various topics.
Ex. a simple address book.
Build an in memory version - one feature at a time - listing addresses; sort them by first, last names; filtering, searching using right data structures;
Then do so using collections and libraries.
Then use file storage;
Then use a db... An rdbms and then move on to a nosql.

D. Use portals like codekata and sololens which allows you to gamify the learning. Get to see how others have solved the problem in different ways.