[mmahemoff]

To elaborate, the goal should be to move forward by cycling between asking questions and doing something:

Ask question <-------> Do something (ie bang out code)

The "do something" will never be perfect, so don't waste hours trying to understand the theory perfectly. Use the coding time as a way to both test your knowledge and drive further questions.

This is why it's helpful to pick a motivating project while learning to code. It keeps you moving ahead and makes sure the "question time" is truly filling in the knowledge gaps you need to fill in.

[uoou]

>This is why it's helpful to pick a motivating project while learning to code.

Very much the case for me, yeah. I've tried learning from tutorials and books and I just get bored. But if I come up with an idea and try to make it, I love it, learning the bits I need as I need them.

Should note that I think that if one is capable of learning the academic way, that's probably a better approach. Understanding programming in the general and thus being able to apply it to the specific. You'll certainly make better code that way.

But for me, for whom learning that way is never going to work, the ad-hoc way is fine. It doesn't really matter if my code is scrappy so long as it works and doesn't do harm.