Why learning to program alone is a terrible idea

Learning to program is hard and lot of people give up before even trying. but we see lot of books that claim to teach programming in 21 days or less. Following is the only way it can happen (abstruse goose)

How to teach yourself programming in 21 days

Seriously, why is everyone in such a rush?

Here is my story:

I was very crazy to develop strategy game of my own. I knew computers were very smart to defeat humans in many strategy games. How they really work? In due course of time I came to know computer intelligence terminology, Artificial Intelligence. I was excited as I found the target! I started surfing internet for AI. Many people advised me ‘data structure and algorithm’ is prerequisite of AI. I was okay, lets pick D.S and Algo before AI. Again I was told basic coding skills with some language is prerequisite of DS and algorithm. Nope, skip it, I am the geek of coding in java.
I learned ds and algorithm from some online courses, novice to advanced. They were really awesome!
Now moving all the way to AI! Again I started following some awesome online courses and solved some intersting problems using AI I learned. Oh yes, I learned too much! I actually implemented AI to develop small games and shared it with my friends. Life was going awesome.

Once my friend asked me to participate in online programming competitions like topcoder and codeforces. My confidence was in some other level. I started participating in topcoder. Because of my confidence, it took more than a week for me to know that I am a novice coder who do not have even basic coding skills. This experience was page turner. I started practice in topcoder like anything. The problems that I solve in few days, other guys solving problems within a minutes. Who are these guys? Do they belong to some community I am not aware of? I was searching for guys to answer me.
Due to my hard effort I was interacted with some guys who were also newbie but curious to grow in topcoder. Wow! We shake hands and created our own practice and knowledge sharing community. Trust me, our growth was exponential!
As of now when I thinks back to my coding experience I can say few things

1. Learning alone can boost up your confidence till you hit the reality.
2. No matter how hard is the subject, competitive environment pushes your limits.
3. We unconsciously dominate our laziness when we learn collaboratively.
4. More or less humans are born to learn collaboratively

I learned the lesson in the hard way and when I did we did not have an easy way to find people to learn together and it took me lot of time and effort to find someone to learn with.

That’s why we are trying to solve problem of learning together. Here is how we started. check https://colearn.co. Good luck and have fun.

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