Wanna learn to code? Build Mini Projects.

One of the most common mistakes I see people make when learning code is approaching it like they want to memorize all the code, or learn everything, before starting to actually WRITE code.

In this video I explain mini projects, and give some resources to actually learn to code.

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Resources mentioned:

ChatGPT prompt for mini project ideas:
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"You are an expert in coding who is going to help me learn the fundamentals of [coding language] by providing me with 20 mini coding projects.

I'm at a [beginner/intermediate] level, so I would like exercises that reflect that.

These mini projects should be simple things that take a few minutes, to a few hours, to at most a day to complete.

Things like temperature converters, fizzbuzz, and similar exercises.

Please generate me this list of mini projects, along with a little background for each exercise as a prompt. Instead of just giving me a project name, I'd like you to give me information so I can solve it.

For example, if I was going to calculate Movie Ticket prices depending on age, I would want you to tell me what ages each ticket price has (i.e. kids are $10, adults are $15, matinee is... etc.)"

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Chapters:
0:00 start
0:24 learn by building
1:26 build 50 - 100 mini projects
1:48 why this works
3:39 resources
3:33 Angela Yu
4:35 MOOC by University of Helsinki
5:50 Exercism

[jamestalks]

Great advice in this video, keep up the good work bro

[omercakmak]

The getting fit metaphor is really thought provoking for me. Thank you for this video!

As someone who failed going to the gym consistently, I am also failing with consistent practice with coding. I work in customer support and learning python with the goal of a career change. I learned a good chunk of the fundamentals for python in a day or two and then forgot about everything, did not look at anything programming-related for weeks. This led to me making zero progress as I forgot the concepts and have to re-learn them now.

A year ago I had bought a 1 year gym membership because there was a discount and I wanted to get more muscles. I soaked up a lot of info online and researched a lot. I went to the gym a couple times a week in the first month and felt I was making great progress. However, taking 2-3 months off and never going just erased the progress in terms of strength.

Now, thinking back on it, it's obvious that my default behaviour is not good for me and I need to modify some things. I am not sure how I can accomplish this. The problem is clear, I need to create consistency one way or another and git(!) committed to building. Maybe building 50 100 projects can be a good goal to strive for for me.

[mogenielvis]

Thanks for the update. I have been using Angela Yu's Python projects course.
Handy. And rigorous to say the least. She's such a good teacher.