This is a completely different strategy that I'm going to give you to learn to code.

@imdadcodes

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Why it worked

The video provides actionable, structured advice for a common pain point (learning to code) and uses clear, on-screen text to reinforce the steps, making the content highly digestible and shareable.

Summary

The creator explains a strategic approach to self-learning programming by creating a structured learning plan. He emphasizes the importance of breaking down topics, being realistic about time commitments, and iterating on the plan as progress is made.

Structure

1Introduction to a pragmatic strategy for learning to code
2The importance of structure and roadmaps in learning
3How to identify topics by researching book tables of contents
4The mistake of trying to learn too much too quickly
5The necessity of practice and iteration in a learning plan
6Bonus tip on adjusting time estimates based on actual progress

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On-screen text

THIS IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STRATEGY THAT I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU TO LEARN TO CODE UNLIKE OTHER TIKTOKS AND GENERAL PROGRAMMING CONTENT THIS IS GOING TO BE SPECIFIC PRAGMATIC AND USEFUL BY THE WAY GIVE ME A FOLLOW IF YOU WANT ME TO HELP YOU LEARN PROGRAMMING LEARNING HOW TO CODE IS LIKE LEARNING ANYTHING ELSE WHEN YOU'RE LEARNING SOMETHING NEW FOR THE FIRST TIME THERE'S GOING TO BE A LOT THAT YOU DON'T KNOW AND LIKE ANYTHING ELSE IT REQUIRES THAT FIRST LEVEL OF CURIOSITY AND SOME RESEARCH TO UNDERSTAND EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED TO LEARN WHAT YOU'RE AFTER IS SOME KIND OF STRUCTURE OR ROADMAP AT COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY WHEN YOU'VE STUDIED USUALLY THIS STRUCTURE OR CURRICULUM IS PROVIDED TO YOU OR GENERALLY IF YOU FOLLOW A COURSE THE STRUCTURE AGAIN IS GIVEN TO YOU THE REASON WHY THAT IS IMPORTANT IS BECAUSE THAT STRUCTURE GIVES YOU A PATH THAT YOU CAN FOLLOW AND THE HARD WORK HAS BEEN DONE FOR YOU IN THAT SOMEONE HAS PACKAGED EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED TO LEARN AND BROKEN IT DOWN WEEK BY WEEK OR DAY BY DAY NOW IF YOU'RE TAKING AN APPROACH WHERE YOU'RE SELF LEARNING PROGRAMMING YOU NEED TO COME UP WITH THAT STRUCTURE YOURSELF AND ESSENTIALLY YOU NEED TO COME UP WITH WHAT I CALL A LEARNING PLAN THE FIRST STEP TO COMING UP WITH A LEARNING PLAN IS FIGURING OUT WHAT YOU NEED TO LEARN LEARNING PYTHON INVOLVES COVERING ALL THE TOPICS THAT ARE OFFERED BY THE PYTHON PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE SPECIFICALLY ITS FEATURES NOW OF COURSE IF YOU'VE NEVER LEARNED PYTHON BEFORE YOU WON'T KNOW WHAT THOSE TOPICS ARE THAT YOU NEED TO LEARN SO ONE QUICK THING THAT YOU CAN DO IS JUST GO ON AMAZON AND TYPE PYTHON PROGRAMMING BOOK CLICK ON THE FREE SAMPLE AND JUST LOOK AT THE TOPICS IN THE TABLE OF CONTENTS DO THIS A FEW TIMES FOR OTHER PYTHON PROGRAMMING BOOKS AND THEN SEE IF YOU CAN NOTICE A PATTERN IN THE TABLE OF CONTENTS IN TERMS OF THE COMMON TOPICS THAT WILL APPEAR THAT WILL BASICALLY FORM THE GIST OF YOUR LEARNING PLAN ONCE YOU'VE GOT A GIST OF THE TOPICS NOW YOU NEED TO TACKLE THEM AND THIS IS WHERE I SEE MOST BEGINNERS MAKING THE SAME MISTAKE AND THAT IS WHAT THEY TRY TO DO IS LEARN EVERYTHING WITHIN A WEEK THEY LIST OUT ALL THE TOPICS AND THEN SAY TO THEMSELVES THAT THEY'RE GOING TO GO THROUGH AN EIGHT HOUR YOUTUBE VIDEO COVERING IT ALL I'M GOING TO LEARN PYTHON ON A WEEKEND IT'S NAIVE BECAUSE IT GOES AGAINST ONE OF THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL POINTS WHEN IT COMES TO LEARNING PROGRAMMING AND THAT IS PROGRAMMING IS NOT A PASSIVE EXERCISE TO LEARN PROGRAMMING IS TO LEARN MATH YOU NEED TO PRACTICE TO GET BETTER AND YOU NEED TO WRITE CODE TO BUILD SOFTWARE AND BECAUSE OF THAT THE IDEA OF LEARNING PYTHON IN A WEEKEND IS FLAWED BECAUSE WHILE YOU CAN UNDERSTAND AND WATCH A YOUTUBE VIDEO COVERING THE KEY PYTHON TOPICS TURNING THAT INTO BEING ABLE TO WRITE PYTHON CODE WITHOUT HAVING TO GOOGLE EVERY TWO MINUTES THAT REQUIRES A LOT OF PRACTICE AND THAT'S GOING TO TAKE A BIT OF TIME TO BUILD UP SO ONCE YOU'VE GOT YOUR LIST OF TOPICS THIS IS THE NEXT STEP THAT YOU NEED TO TAKE FOR EACH TOPIC YOU NEED TO DECIDE HOW MANY HOURS A WEEK THAT YOU CAN GIVE TO LEARNING THAT TOPIC ADD A 30% BUFFER BECAUSE OFTEN WE TRY TO OVERESTIMATE HOW MUCH TIME WE ACTUALLY HAVE AND HOW MUCH TIME WE CAN ACTUALLY GIVE SAY FOR EXAMPLE YOU THINK YOU CAN GIVE SIX HOURS TO LEARNING SAID TOPIC TRIM THAT DOWN TO ABOUT TWO OR THREE HOURS AND THEN IN YOUR LEARNING PLAN WRITE DOWN THAT YOU'RE GOING TO SPEND TWO HOURS TO LEARN THAT TOPIC DO THAT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LEARNING PLAN SO YOU'LL HAVE A CLEAR IDEA OF HOW MANY HOURS THAT YOU'RE GOING TO NEED TO GIVE AND MORE IMPORTANTLY HOW MANY WEEKS THAT IS GOING TO REQUIRE AND THE REASON WHY THIS IS BENEFICIAL IS YOU'RE GOING TO BE REALISTIC YOU ARE MUCH MORE LIKELY TO STICK TO A PLAN LIKE THIS BECAUSE YOU'VE SPACED OUT YOUR COMMITMENTS AND YOU'VE BEEN REALISTIC WITH THE TIME THAT YOU HAVE THE LAST THING THAT I WOULD SAY AND THIS IS A BONUS TIP SOME TOPICS MAY REQUIRE MORE HOURS THAN OTHERS WHEN IT COMES TO LEARNING SOMETHING NEW FOR THE FIRST TIME YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW YOU CAN MAKE A STRONG ASSUMPTION BASED ON RESEARCH THAT A SET TOPIC IS GOING TO TAKE THREE HOURS TO COVER BUT YOU MIGHT FIND THAT IT ACTUALLY TOOK DOUBLE THE TIME WHAT YOU WANT TO DO IS ITERATE ON YOUR PLAN AND UPDATE IT AS YOU GO ALONG IF YOU FIND THAT YOU'RE LEARNING A BIT SLOWER THEN THAT'S FINE JUST MAKE SURE YOU UPDATE THE PLAN ACCORDINGLY SO YOU CAN GIVE YOURSELF A BIT MORE TIME IF YOU FIND THAT YOU'RE LEARNING FASTER THEN OF COURSE UPDATE THE PLAN TO REFLECT THAT THE POINT IS MAKE SURE YOU ITERATE BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET IT PERFECT THE FIRST TIME BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS YOU START OFF WITH A PLAN THAT'S REALISTIC FROM THE GET-GO IF YOU FOUND THIS HELPFUL MAKE SURE YOU FOLLOW FOR MORE

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Transcript

Unlike other TikToks and general programming content, this is going to be specific, pragmatic and useful. By the way, give me a follow if you want me to help you learn programming. Learning how to code is like learning anything else. When you're learning something new for the first time, there's going to be a lot that you don't know. And like anything else, it requires that first level of curiosity and some research to understand exactly what you need to learn. What you're after is some kind of structure or roadmap. At college or university, when you've studied, usually this structure or curriculum is provided to you. Or generally, if you follow a course, the structure again is given to you. The reason why that is important is because that structure gives you a path that you can follow and the hard work has been done for you in that someone has packaged exactly what you need to learn and broken it down week by week or day by day. Now, if you're taking an approach where you're self-learning programming, you need to come up with that structure yourself and essentially you need to come up with what I call a learning plan. The first step to coming up with a learning plan is figuring out what you need to learn. Learning Python involves covering all the topics that are offered by the Python programming language, specifically its features. Now, of course, if you've never learned Python before, you won't know what those topics are that you need to learn. So one quick thing that you can do is just go on Amazon and type Python programming book, click on the free sample and just look at the topics in the table of contents. Do this a few times for other Python programming books and then see if you can notice a pattern in the table of contents in terms of the common topics that will appear. That will basically form the gist of your learning plan. Once you've got a gist of the topics, now you need to tackle them and this is where I see most beginners making the same mistake. And that is what they try to do is learn everything within a week. They list out all the topics and then say to themselves that they're going to go through an eight hour YouTube video covering it all. I'm going to learn Python on a weekend. It's naive because it goes against one of the most fundamental points when it comes to learning programming and that is programming is not a passive exercise. To learn programming is to learn math. You need to practice to get better and you need to write code to build software. And because of that, the idea of learning Python in a weekend is flawed because while you can understand and watch a YouTube video covering the key Python topics, turning that into being able to write Python code without having to Google every two minutes, that requires a lot of practice and that's going to take a bit of time to build up. So once you've got your list of topics, this is the next step that you need to take. For each topic, you need to decide how many hours a week that you can give to learning that topic. Add a 30% buffer because often we try to overestimate how much time we actually have and how much time we can actually give. Say for example, you think you can give six hours to learning said topic, trim that down to about two or three hours and then in your learning plan, write down that you're going to spend two hours to learn that topic. Do that for the rest of your learning plan so you'll have a clear idea of how many hours that you're going to need to give and more importantly, how many weeks that is going to require. And the reason why this is beneficial is you're going to be realistic. You are much more likely to stick to a plan like this because you've spaced out your commitments and you've been realistic with the time that you have. The last thing that I would say and this is a bonus tip, some topics may require more hours than others. When it comes to learning something new for the first time, you don't know what you don't know. You can make a strong assumption based on research that a set topic is going to take three hours to cover, but you might find that it actually took double the time. What you want to do is iterate on your plan and update it as you go along. If you find that you're learning a bit slower, then that's fine. Just make sure you update the plan accordingly so you can give yourself a bit more time. If you find that you're learning faster, then of course update the plan to reflect that. The point is make sure you iterate because you're not going to get it perfect the first time, but the most important thing is you start off with a plan that's realistic from the get-go. If you found this helpful, make sure you follow for more.