When I played high school basketball…
And, I wanted to become a better shooter… my coach and I spent hours analyzing film of the best shooters at the time. Hand placement, elbow position, follow-through, on and on.
Breaking them down.
Figuring out WHY they were so good.
You start to see trends.
When I first started learning copywriting… one of the pieces of advice I got was to take an ad I knew worked well and write it out by hand myself. It helped embed the flow of a good ad into your muscle memory.
And, again, you start to see trends.
You get a “feel” for what’s good and what’s not.
Sooooo…
What’s one of the best ways to learn a new programming language?
As John Sonmez says:
“I think the best place to start is by looking at the source code of an actual working application. It’s going to feel uncomfortable. You might not feel like you’re understanding anything. [That] is ok. By starting out this way, you are going to have a serious head start over most programmers who have no idea what the programming language they are trying to learn even looks like. It’s always a good idea to get a lay of the land before embarking on any journey. Programming is no different.”
Even better?
If you can get inside that programmer’s head and learn the reasons WHY they made the choices they did. It gives you a depth of understanding that’s hard to rival… and does more that just teach you “what to type”.
It imbues the “spirit” of that programmer into you.
To grow and adapt and make your own.
And, have your own point-of-view and perspective.
Which is what an artist is.
In any case, that’s been my goal with my teaching from the very beginning. That’s why I always say, “It’s less about the code…” It’s more about the why behind it and learning how to be an artist.
Someone unique.
Who can bring something new and fresh into the world.
Not just someone who can regurgitate a block of code…
With no real idea why it’s written the way it is.
Anyway, if you want to dive into PHP and MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and the like… in this way, then give my web development curriculum on Skillshare a look, because THAT is how I teach.
And, you can get access to all of it for free.
All the details on that are at: https://johnmorrisonline.com/skillshare
Later,
John
