If someone asked me whether I wanted to learn something new every day, I would raise my hand every time. But there is more to it than just raising a hand which is the “HOW” of learning.

Learning a new technology is a roller coaster ride, it is not that smooth buddy! A little passion, a little more conscious approach and lots of practice, and you’ll be good to go with something new in your brain. Let’s elaborate on this “conscious approach” that I just mentioned.

When I came to ColoredCow, there were explosions of new tech all around me; things I hadn’t done before, only read about. Some of them seemed like Greek or Latin to me. This was a nice chance for me to put on my learning glasses. You’ll find how I went about this journey.

First and foremost, do not forget to start with the basic tutorials that are available on internet. They help you form the base of the subject you are trying to learn. If you are planning to skip this step, then I am afraid, you might end up regretting. With a motive of saving more time, you will actually end up spending a whole lot more. This is something I can definitely relate to. I was a given a short assignment on Bootstrap. So while I was planning how to go about the assignment, I met, Aishwarya(I am talking about myself :P), the impatient coder who thought she could code anything just by scanning through the tutorials. The price was heavy, I thought I’d be able to finish it in one day, and I ended up finishing it in 1 week! *sigh*. Lesson no.1 learnt, Never ever, ever ever underestimate a new tech, it can screw you up big time.

Lesson no. 2.
When you have gained substantial amount of knowledge on the subject, try imitating something that already exists. You will know the final product, it will make you use all your knowledge to achieve that. This also helps in understanding of common trials and errors that generally occur during the learning process. This will give you confidence over what you are learning.

Lesson no. 3
Do not hesitate to ask when you are stuck. I still am working on this one. A lot of us do this. To me it feels like the world will come to an end if I asked someone, why my program is not working, per say. I have been struggling with this trait of mine. The point is that it is alright to get stuck and it is alright to feel not so good about it but the important part is that, you shouldn’t get carried away in the worrying process, break the chain, and ask your question.

Last and a very important Lesson no.4, Increase your difficulty level with every iteration of your exercise. This enables you to explore new things and even challenge the existing ones and it’s fun too.

-Aishwarya