Original subtitles

Hi guys and welcome to the course. Now after thousands of students have taken this course, I've compiled

some of the top tips from the most successful students to help you make the most of your time on the

course.

So I know what I do with instruction manuals when I receive them.

But this is not it.

Because I want to share with you some of the most useful tips that will help you learn to code and get

the most out of the course.

So first tip is as you go from lesson to lesson in the course, you'll find that each of the lessons should

take about 10 minutes long.

And this is something that we intentionally designed for the course.

Now, a lot of students when they're watching video tutorials online very often what people do is they'll

watch the video and type along to the code.

And this is what we tend to call code along.

So, the tutorial types a bit, you type a bit. You try to keep up with the pace of the tutorial or you pause

the video every so often to catch up. But essentially, you're coding along with the instructor.

And this is probably one of the most intuitive ways for people to learn from online tutorials.

Now in order for you to be more successful than most people, what I would recommend is instead to watch

the video tutorials, which are usually, as I said, about 10 minutes long.

If it's a 20 minute or a 50 minute tutorial, then stop it at around the 10 minute mark. And while you're

watching it, instead of spending time trying to frantically type out the code, I want you instead to just

try and understand what's going on, why the code is being written and understand the purpose of the code

rather than trying to type along at the same pace.

Now once you've understood what those 10 minutes are about, what the tutorial is trying to teach you,

then to go to your computer and type out the code and try to replicate what happened in the 10 minutes.

Now the reason why this helps people learn so much better is because, instead of just copying code by

rote, which doesn't teach you anything,

instead it forces you to really understand what's going on and absorb the content and then test yourself

afterwards to see if you really understood.

So this is my number one top tip.

And it's important remember that we are learning programming. We're not learning how to type fast. It

doesn't help you become a better programmer by just copying out code as fast as you can.

If you wanted to practice your typing and to speed up your typing skills, then I recommend something

like keybr.com where you can focus on that specific skill to improve your speed of typing.

But what we're going to focus on in the course is learning programming.

So we're going to keep our eye on the prize.

Now, while you're listening to the videos and you're understanding what's going on I recommend taking

a few notes for yourself to come back to or review in the future.

And this is especially useful after when those 10 minutes are up and you're trying to remember one of

those bits of code that you had to type and what was the theory that was covered.

So one of my favorite note taking systems is something called Cornell Notes, and it's very very simple.

It just splits a single note page into four actions. The top you have the topic of what the notes are

about, and then you have the section of notes where you would write down the majority of your notes.

Now after you write a few lines, it's recommended that you go and review those notes and pick out the

most important keywords or questions that you're asking yourself that you want to research on later

or any sort of hints or reminders to yourself.

And finally, once you've completed the lesson, then you go to the summary section and you summarize what

the entire lesson was about in a few bullet points.

So I've created a downloadable PDF off of this note taking system.

So if you're keen to try it out go ahead and download it from the course resources section and you can

print it out into a notebook or just on a few loose sheets if you want to try it out.

Now the next thing to remember is that if I'm talking too fast or too slow, you can always change the

playback speed.

Now if you're in a lesson that you find particularly easy to understand and you already know most of

the concepts then go ahead and switch the video player to double speed so that you can cover much more

ground in the same space of time.

Now on the other hand, if I'm talking too fast or if English is not your first language, then feel free

to change the speed to a half speed so that I talk a lot slower and you can take up the information

more readily.

But it's important that you try to not skip any of the tutorials on any of the modules.

And the reason is because the curriculum was carefully designed so that it would be a smooth sloping

ramp. So that you start out at the beginning and you slowly make your way through more and more difficult

concepts.

Now if you skip a couple of modules, then it makes it really really hard for you to catch up and to understand

what's going on, which is the most important thing.

However, some of the videos I will label with optional or skipable, and in that case feel free to skip

those lessons if they don't interest you.

Now the next thing to remember is that if you find at any point the tutorials become harder and they

inevitably will be, they're designed to get harder and harder.

But if you find that it's a little bit too difficult then I recommend just bookmarking it.

Making a note of which module you really struggled with and trying to use that method of watching the

videos for 10 minutes, reviewing what has been taught, trying to replicate the code yourself.

But if you're still stuck and you really don't understand what's going on, then that might be something

that you have to come back to.

So I find that usually with programming concepts, it helps to try it out, read around the topic and then

come back to it after a week or so. And very often,

what was very very difficult first time you come across it, after you've done it a few times, after you've

researched around the topic and then you come back to it, it becomes a lot easier.

So remember to mark things for review that you don't understand.

Now recently, I went to learn windsurfing in Mykonos. And it's a skill that I've never had before.

It's something that I found incredibly challenging and I fell on my face during the entire lesson pretty

much and it hurt a lot.

I got battered and bruised, and my ego got bruised a lot as well. But this is exactly what it's like when

you try to learn a new skill. So it's important that you persevere and continue to put in the hours to

practice and to try and try again because you can learn something very superficially just by watching

a video or, you know, trying it for a few hours but in order to master a skill, the most important thing

is practice.

Now the final thing is that, I will say it now you will get stuck at some point because everybody does.

And in fact, I wish that Hollywood would stop making movies where programmers are just typing away like

some sort of frenzied hacker person. Because most of the programmers I know who actually do this as a

job, they spend probably 90 percent of their time just staring at the screen trying to figure out what

is wrong.

Why is it not working.

So getting stuck is very much a universal part of programming, something that you have to come to even

love and enjoy.

So when you do find yourself stuck I want you to imagine that you're already a fully fledged developer

working a job where somebody is paying you to do this for them because you're the professional.

So I want you to use the tools that professional programmers use when they get stuck, and that is Google

and Stack Overflow.

Try to figure it out. Try to see what did other people do.

Because 99% of the time, you won't be the first person who's come across that problem.

It's very likely that somebody has experienced that before and other people have helped them to solve

that problem or help them understand what it is they're stuck on. And the thing to remember is that struggling

is good. In that moment when you finally spot that typo or finally figure out why it is that your code

isn't working and you fix it,

that is one of the best feelings in the world. So, struggle is good and it really is through the struggles

that you actually improve and level up your skills.

So, I'm so excited to be on this journey with you and I look forward to all of your success in the future.