Dan Martell - January 01, 2018


How To Teach Yourself To Code


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

197.18948

Word count

1,885

Sentence count

85


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about why programming is one of the most important skills you can learn and how you can fast track your learning to code. I share my own personal story of how I learned to code and how it changed my life.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 I was telling people like,
00:00:00.840 I actually don't see any of the clips
00:00:02.320 before they go live, and...
00:00:13.440 How do you learn to code?
00:00:15.440 That is the question,
00:00:16.280 especially if you wanna build an app or a software project,
00:00:18.960 or even if you just want a bit more productive
00:00:21.120 in your day-to-day work.
00:00:22.640 Programming is one of the most powerful things,
00:00:24.640 but if you're starting, it's challenging.
00:00:26.320 You don't even know where to go.
00:00:27.760 you probably feel overwhelmed with the options
00:00:30.860 and you feel like it's probably gonna take you six months,
00:00:33.300 12 months, maybe years to get good at it
00:00:36.000 and I wanna share with you guys that that is not the case.
00:00:39.280 Luckily, we live in an incredible world
00:00:41.240 where a lot of the deep, complex stuff
00:00:43.780 has been taken care for us.
00:00:45.340 I mean, I don't write code anymore in zeros and ones.
00:00:47.640 I write it in this beautiful language
00:00:49.180 that looks just like English
00:00:50.880 and that's what I wanna share with you guys today.
00:00:53.120 You know, I was fortunate enough that when I was 17,
00:00:56.860 You know, if you don't know my story,
00:00:58.260 I got in a lot of trouble as a teenager
00:01:00.600 and really programming saved my life
00:01:04.460 because it became my new addiction.
00:01:06.020 You know, I struggled with drug addiction as a kid
00:01:10.800 and in rehab, I spent 11 months in therapy,
00:01:14.880 is where I discovered this yellow book on Java programming
00:01:17.780 and two things, really, programming
00:01:19.640 because it became kind of my focus, fascination
00:01:23.020 and obsession and entrepreneurship
00:01:26.200 because it also allowed me to improve myself
00:01:28.480 and focus on personal development
00:01:29.820 and really grow and challenge me,
00:01:31.980 because I call entrepreneurship
00:01:32.980 the ultimate personal development program.
00:01:34.900 Those two things are the reason why
00:01:36.440 I'm sitting here in front of you,
00:01:37.740 and I've been blessed to have gone on
00:01:39.060 to have started five companies.
00:01:41.500 The last three were acquired.
00:01:42.760 The last two were venture-backed
00:01:44.980 by some incredible investors like Mark Cuban.
00:01:48.000 And I look at my life today,
00:01:50.300 and I can't imagine how it would have looked
00:01:53.140 if I didn't find that book
00:01:55.420 and really invest in learning to code.
00:01:57.700 And now, I don't think you need to program,
00:01:59.340 especially if you're building a software company,
00:02:01.920 but personally for me, I have two little boys
00:02:04.520 and they started coding on the iPad
00:02:06.540 when it was like simple little games.
00:02:08.440 I mean, we live in a beautiful world
00:02:09.960 where anybody at any age can learn the fundamentals
00:02:12.980 of logic and programming and math.
00:02:16.160 To the now point, it's super fun for me,
00:02:18.000 we're programming robots with these things called mBots.
00:02:20.720 So, you know, and look, I don't write production code anymore
00:02:24.960 because it's very inefficient
00:02:26.440 and I probably introduce more bugs than it's worth.
00:02:29.020 I have way smarter people now,
00:02:30.660 but I'll still bust out my text editor
00:02:32.740 and write a script and patch together different APIs
00:02:35.240 to look at some data in a unique way.
00:02:37.620 But it's just, for me, it's the opportunity
00:02:40.280 to become more efficient, more productive in your work,
00:02:42.480 and higher value to the workplace.
00:02:44.920 If you guys, if you're not an entrepreneur
00:02:46.760 but you just want to challenge yourself,
00:02:49.160 being able to write macros and scripts in your job
00:02:53.240 from HR to marketing to sales is a powerful thing to have.
00:02:57.720 So I wanna walk you through how to think about programming,
00:03:00.780 learn it, and at the end, I'm gonna share with you guys
00:03:02.920 my ultimate tip if you really want to fast track everything.
00:03:06.720 So the first thing is you need to block out time.
00:03:08.760 You know, I was just out of, you know, therapy,
00:03:13.260 going back into high school, and what I decided to do
00:03:15.900 is just obsess around learning programming.
00:03:18.500 And for me, it was going to the bookstore and buying a book.
00:03:22.400 This is before the internet had just a crazy amount of content.
00:03:26.880 YouTube has so many tutorials and there's an abundance of schools
00:03:30.980 online that'll teach you this.
00:03:32.240 I just invested $30, $40 in a book and I did that to the tune
00:03:35.740 of almost $3,000.
00:03:36.980 Now it was my dad that saw the passion I had and invested in it
00:03:40.720 but that's what I would do nights and weekends.
00:03:42.820 So first step is block your calendar, make the commitment,
00:03:46.320 give yourself maybe four weekends and it doesn't matter if you
00:03:49.260 have other stuff going on, just say look, I'm gonna code for
00:03:51.700 four hours each day, each weekend for the next four weeks
00:03:55.000 and just give yourself the chance to learn the skill.
00:03:58.600 Finally, or the second thing I would say is wireframe a simple,
00:04:02.020 and this is the key, simple idea.
00:04:03.440 And simple idea could be, I wonder which one of my friends
00:04:06.440 like my posts the most on Facebook,
00:04:08.140 or I wonder what are the best, most liked videos on Instagram,
00:04:13.620 or think of an idea that's relevant to you that just simple,
00:04:17.460 and it could be ugly, because it will be ugly,
00:04:19.420 but just taking the time to wireframe it.
00:04:21.980 I'm talking about like blank piece of printer paper
00:04:25.060 and a Sharpie and drawing boxes and squares and labels
00:04:29.160 and buttons and just making it like,
00:04:31.160 oh, this is what you would do.
00:04:32.100 You would connect your Facebook account
00:04:33.600 and then it would show this
00:04:34.560 and we'd wanna show that information.
00:04:36.200 You need to have a wireframe for the idea.
00:04:38.080 It's great to learn the hello worlds of the world
00:04:42.080 in different programming languages,
00:04:43.780 but I think it's important,
00:04:44.980 and this is what I learned teaching my kids,
00:04:46.780 is you need to connect a real world passion
00:04:49.620 to the skill development.
00:04:51.480 So it can't be just theory, you need to have something
00:04:54.220 that you wanna learn to build towards.
00:04:56.420 So that's why two is wireframing a simple idea.
00:04:59.400 Three is choosing, or really three is understanding
00:05:04.260 that there's three parts to building software, okay?
00:05:06.540 And it's a little complicated and you would learn this
00:05:08.740 in kind of going through this journey,
00:05:10.840 but one is the front end.
00:05:12.400 It's the how do you display the information in your app.
00:05:15.700 So that's one is the front end.
00:05:17.200 The second is the back end.
00:05:19.000 How do you interact with that information on the front screen?
00:05:22.780 When you see a form, when you see information listed out on a
00:05:26.440 page, there's a back end layer of code that actually produces
00:05:30.380 that information that's displayed in the front end.
00:05:32.820 Then finally, there's a database.
00:05:34.280 That's the third key area.
00:05:35.560 And the database is where you store the information in the
00:05:39.360 data pieces, right?
00:05:40.760 So there's no logic per se in the database.
00:05:43.200 It's really just trying to say, well, I have a user table
00:05:47.240 and I'm gonna store the information about my user
00:05:49.040 and then I have a Facebook page table
00:05:51.980 where I store the information about the Facebook page
00:05:53.880 and you just kind of design the database diagram.
00:05:56.220 But those are the three big ideas of programming
00:05:59.340 is I've got my front end, my back end and my database store
00:06:02.660 and you'll learn the technologies
00:06:04.520 that are appropriate for you.
00:06:05.820 Because number four is picking a language.
00:06:08.460 Now this is the debate and I would love to have it below
00:06:11.160 in the comments.
00:06:12.600 The debate is what programming language should you choose?
00:06:16.300 I will tell you that I've programmed in pretty much
00:06:18.740 every programming language out there for the most part.
00:06:22.040 Not every, there's tons.
00:06:23.280 But like, you know, I started with Microsoft Stack
00:06:26.080 and then I eventually found Ruby.
00:06:27.980 So if you wanna know what I love,
00:06:29.520 I love Ruby and Rails and you can go down that path.
00:06:32.620 But there's also Python,
00:06:33.960 that's an incredible programming language.
00:06:35.480 There's PHP, which companies maybe you've heard of,
00:06:38.600 like Facebook use.
00:06:40.860 And then I think JavaScript is like the universal
00:06:43.460 programming language of the internet.
00:06:44.900 And with Node, you can do a lot of really cool stuff.
00:06:47.140 So those are kind of, if you ask me to pick four
00:06:50.100 that I would suggest starting off,
00:06:51.680 I just think the syntax makes a lot of sense.
00:06:53.600 It's Englishy, if you looked at the code,
00:06:55.600 you could probably read the logic and you'd be like,
00:06:57.740 oh, that's how it worked, cool, I got that.
00:07:00.340 But that's a big one.
00:07:01.280 And then finally, the fifth step is to just consume tutorials.
00:07:06.280 And online, if you go to, I mean, YouTube
00:07:10.280 and search programming tutorials for an insert
00:07:13.280 programming language or you search on YouTube,
00:07:16.280 Google, you know, top tutorials to learn
00:07:19.280 and then insert programming language,
00:07:21.280 you will find an abundance of information online.
00:07:25.280 And if you go to a bookstore, it sounds crazy,
00:07:27.280 you can do it on your Kindle or you can go to a physical,
00:07:29.280 I still love going to a real bookstore.
00:07:31.280 I love the smell of knowledge.
00:07:33.280 It's just, for me, just intoxicating.
00:07:36.460 And getting a book and just committing to just crushing,
00:07:39.460 you know, the 21 days Ruby programming books
00:07:42.460 or whatever it is, that's the way I would do it.
00:07:46.500 Now, I also wanna share a major tip,
00:07:48.600 but before, I wanna review real quick.
00:07:50.300 Number one, you gotta really block the time out
00:07:52.760 to be successful.
00:07:53.600 Two, you wanna ensure that you use a wireframe
00:07:55.700 to focus on a simple idea.
00:07:57.540 Three, understand that there's three core areas
00:07:59.700 of programming, the front end, the back end,
00:08:01.680 and the database.
00:08:03.040 Four, you want to choose a language.
00:08:04.940 So look at Ruby, Python, JavaScript, PHP,
00:08:08.080 and whatever else you want to debate below in the comments.
00:08:10.380 We can do that.
00:08:11.780 And then finally, it's make sure that you dedicate
00:08:15.060 and consume the tutorials now.
00:08:16.820 If you want to fast track all this,
00:08:18.560 this is what's happened in the last really four or five years
00:08:21.560 is there are schools, online schools and in-person schools,
00:08:26.760 boot camps, workshops that you can invest.
00:08:29.140 Some of them are $50 a month and other ones are,
00:08:32.800 you know, $20,000 for six months,
00:08:34.960 but being around other people that are learning how to code
00:08:39.400 and going through the similar challenges as you
00:08:41.980 and passionate enough in themselves
00:08:43.980 to invest in that kind of program,
00:08:45.680 that is incredibly valuable
00:08:48.920 because I had to learn it all myself.
00:08:51.020 Luckily, I had that obsession
00:08:52.480 that really kind of propelled me forward
00:08:53.860 even when I got confused and I didn't understand stuff
00:08:56.160 and I kept going through it.
00:08:57.520 But if you don't have that in your world,
00:08:59.660 in your community, amongst your peer group,
00:09:01.220 then I would definitely suggest,
00:09:02.640 if you wanna take it to the next level,
00:09:04.580 to look at investing in one of those programs online.
00:09:07.280 Again, if you want my recommendations,
00:09:08.600 post below in the comments, I will answer them for you.
00:09:11.060 As per usual, I'm gonna challenge you
00:09:12.120 to live a bigger knife, live a bigger life,
00:09:15.140 and a bigger business, and I'll see you next week.
00:09:17.440 If you liked this video,
00:09:18.280 be sure to subscribe to my channel for other tips
00:09:20.540 and tricks on how to become a better software entrepreneur.
00:09:23.140 I'd also encourage you to join my newsletter
00:09:25.400 where I share exclusive invites to events,
00:09:27.920 free training, and other community contests.
00:09:29.840 Ready to get going?
00:09:30.560 I've got two more videos queued up for you.
00:09:32.120 I will see you next Monday.