Everyone has personal goals, but I created a list of universal ideas for everyone:
Create a website
Get a new job
Work as a freelancer
To work remotely
Test yourself
Improve financial condition
Remember to save space for a special purpose: a personal project. If you want to be successful and stay motivated, you must create pet projects. But you don't have to always finish them. The idea is to achieve small goals in your own projects.
I'll give you an example. If you want to learn how to use a database in general, you can start a blog project. But if you are learning how to add something to the database, then you can create a simple form to add a record to the database.
It is important to use projects to achieve goals because it leads to working on concrete examples. What can motivate more than this?
2. Do it again... and again
Once you choose your goals, work on them as much as possible. The more you practice, the more you learn.
Learning to code is a skill, and you can compare it to playing sports. If you want to be great at it and get your work done, you have to practice a lot, specifically on a PC, and not read books and break down code with a pencil.
Write code daily, during your lunch break or after work. Even if it's only for one hour, if you create a habit and stick to it, you'll see daily improvements, incremental but permanent.
"Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment."Zig Ziglar —Twitter)
A bit of storytelling:do you know why i created HereWeCode.io?
I am fascinated by code and knowledge sharing. Over the past few years, I have read many articles on platforms: freeCodeCamp, owed to and so on. And I learned that everyone can share what they study and create, even if it's just a little thing.
Write for others and you will improve your programming skills. Being able to explain a concept and how it works is an essential developer skill.
Remember: You don't have to be an expert in the field to write about something.
4. Read the code
Everything you read about code will improve your programming skills.
Here is what you can read:
Code on GitHub
Books
Articles
Newsletters
You can learn a lot from someone else's code. You can find experts in your field or use GitHub to find code similar to your own. It's interesting to see how other developers write code and solve problems. You will develop your critical thinking skills. Is the method they use better than yours? Let's check.
Besides programming every day, why not read at least one article or a few pages of a programming book every day?
Some famous books:
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin
Pragmatic programmer: from apprentice to master
Cal Newport: Deep work
5. Ask questions
Feel free to ask too much.
Asking questions is helpful if you don't understand something. You can refer to your team or friends. Use programming forums if you don't know anyone you can ask.
Sometimes you need another explanation to understand the concept. Of course, it's good to hang out and look for an answer on the Internet, but at some point it's still better to ask other developers.
Take advantage of the other person's knowledge to improve yourself. And if you ask another developer, there is a high chance that he will not only answer, but also rate you.