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Re:Programming by canadaduane on Sunday February 19, 2012 @08:05PM (#3610930)
You need to do two things to get good at programming: go deep, and go broad. The problem is, you can't do them both at the same time, so, you have to alternate between the two.

Pick a project that is awesome, and that you think you might know how to do (or even a little bit). Work at it and try your best. This is how you go deep. Basically, you pick one narrow thing and do it as best as you can.

Next, find someone (or a book, or a web guide, or a website like codecademy.com) that can teach you about the principles of programming. This is more of the "computer science" side of things: how CPUs work, how data is structured, what kinds of algorithms have been discovered and created before, how to succeed at putting complex parts together. Learn all you can about the general rules of programming and the lessons learned from many decades of people trying to get computers to do what they want. This is how you go broad. Basically, you give yourself over to someone who has some structured lessons to teach you.

Then go back to deep. Then broad. Repeat, until you are happy with where you're at (which, if you're an evergreen learner like many of us, will be never! :)

Re:Programming by shainvs on Sunday February 19, 2012 @08:48PM (#3611012)
Thanks I did finish alot of things at codecademy and all I have learned so far was either through w3schools, codecademy, or iTunes-U. Thank you for your feedback I will try and work how you said
Re:Programming by nuclearsandwich on Monday February 20, 2012 @04:43PM (#3614055)
Just a quick note. Avoid w3schools[0]. The Mozilla Developer Network docs[1] look much nicer and are far more accurate.

[0]: http://w3fools.com [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTML