A update on my coding journey

at the beginning of the year I made a post about my plan for the year by dropping out of varsity for one year to push threw coding. well friends I have to say that that was the best idea i ever had. I wanted to update my first post but I lost that accounts information anyway here is a list of all of the books i already read threw

Headfirst c#
css3 the missing manual
javascript and jquary the missing manual
headfirst html and css
The art of seo
c4.0 in a nutshell
php 5 advanced visual quick pro guide
headfirst php and mysql
headfirst javascript
professional javascript for web developers
php objects patterns and practice

these are the books that I still need to complete
Ajax 2nd edition
xmpp the definitive guide
professional xmpp with javascript and jquary

do you want to know what my secret formula is? its just hard work man, just alot of hard work. in fact I never worked this hard in my entire life but it was worth it

PS
all of the books are pirated

congrats on learning so much. but is it really sticking? i find just reading programming books to be a huge waste of time for me, if i were you i'd focus on some key goals you want to achieve (web dev? apps? backend? graphics? hardware? etc..) and take a deep dive now, that's the real value. find/create some projects, that's the way to make it stick

I would start doing things.

Real world projects will solidify your learning and allow you to filter what is important for what you hope to achieve versus what is noise.

rob1977 said:

I would start doing things.

Real world projects will solidify your learning and allow you to filter what is important for what you hope to achieve versus what is noise.

Click to expand...

I second that. Try to get involved in an open source project you like and add value to it. Or maybe you have your own ideas of real projects. I always found that solving real problems is most satisfying.

Congrats, so i guess you're now pretty good in programming. But those hard work would payoff if you start earning money by developing software, if that's your goal.

BTW, that's a pretty good achievement though.

Reading books about programming != real world programming, it's just a time waster.

Props for them Yes, for reading them..

Tho when things change so fast around us drop the books and get your hands dirty

Hey - great post and an interesting question comes to mind: did you simply read all those books or did you learn something from them?

Because, with programming, reading is just the first step. Practice is the next and most important step

When I read the titles of those books it looks like you want to do SEO with good programming skills.... It's like learning to forge iron while wanting to be a car mechanic... I'm sure you'll eventually will get there, but it will take you a while...

Good luck anyhow

What's the update on your learning curve (almost) 6 months later ?

I would stay away from books for the most part, Some are good but most are meh.Problem with books are they are edited and published by non-programmers so alot of the meat is taken out. The real info is in the whitepapers. Read those and apply it.

do a little project now.
programming is 20% learning and 80% doing

You can merge learning and doing. Just always practice what you have just learned. That is the way I am doing it.

I think you should focus on one platform/framework/language.

Like either go for mobile/desktop/web development (not all at once).

Once you get to master one language/platform you can slowly start learning others as well, while earning from what you have already learned.