Day 3. Learn Programming From the Best — Complete Guide to Get Personal Mentors for Free
Everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you.
— Steve Jobs
Get To Know People Who Built The Technology Personally
The most challenging task I tell my students to do is, at the same time, the most rewarding one. By the end of the day you’ll get to know and talk to people behind the technology / programming language you’re about to learn.
It’s essential to understand that even though you’re just about to learn this hot new thing — people who built it are just like you. And they started exactly where you are now. The greatest thing about programming — is the community. The brightest programmers I’ve known — are at the same time — the humblest, easy-going and cool human beings.
So when I tell you that by the end of the day you will be essentially chatting the top programmers in the world — just take my word for it: it’s not a secret club. There is no barrier to enter. And you are welcome to join.
Go to the Source: GitHub
First of all — you need to go to the source. Chances are — the technology you’ve chosen — is open source. Meaning virtually anyone could take a look at how it’s created.
Your first step is to find the GitHub repository — where people are actively working on developing this technology.
Here are some GitHub repositories of hot stuff today:
apple/swift: The Swift Programming Language
angular/angular: One framework. Mobile & desktop.
vuejs/vue: A progressive, incrementally-adoptable JavaScript framework for building UI on the web.
Open recent pull requests and just read couple of them. Essentially what happens here is that people are finding bugs and fixing them together. In the Insights tab you can discover the core contributors to the project — those are real people behind this technology. With real names. And twitter accounts. And sometimes even emails.
Say Hi: Slack Channels / IRC / Mailing Lists
Second thing you want to do — is no engage with the community. To go to the place where the developers hang out, discuss the technology of your choice, ask questions.
You want to search for direct communication — not Stack Overflow or Forums. What you need is a chat-format — where you can go to — and essentially say hi.
The reason for this is simple. From the first days of your learning experience — you have to realize — there is an infinite amount of information on the subject out there. But there is no better way to get is — then to ask from the real human being.
You can only get so far by yourself. You need a place to get directions when you get stuck. You need a place to ask your questions. To show your code. To clear the things you didn’t understand reading documentation.
I love how this picture illustrates learning curve with and without the help of the programming community
Your essential goal is to find a mentor or many mentors — that will help you out — and lead you once you need this the most.
This is imperative that you FIND those channels — and subscribe to them.
Here is the list of some of them you might be interested in:
Where To Get Support — React
wift.org — Community Guidelines
angular/angular — Gitter
vuejs/vue — Gitter
Grab a Beer: Local Meetups
Third thing you want to do — is search for local meet ups — on the technology you’re about to study.
The reasoning behind this is simple: you get all the benefits we’ve discussed in the previous section — but then you also get some human contact. And first contacts with like-minded people — are imperative.
The best place to start your search is meetup.com or Facebook Local Groups.
No group in you area? CREATE one. Just go online and create a group. Be clear about it: you are studying technology X and you want to meet other people who are interested it.
Action Exercises to complete TODAY:
- Find one of the creators of the Language / Core contributors and write him personal note via Twitter: “I’m just starting to learn X and wanted to thank you for creating it!”
- In the Slack/IRC channel you’ve found post following message:
“Hey, just starting to learn X. Chose this one to start: ‘COURSE/BOOK/ARTICLE NAME’. Any suggestions how / where to start — in order to build something useful as a result — not just theory. Thanks in advance!” - Register to participate in the next meeting in you local Meetup group. No group in your area? Create a group yourself!
