If you are interested in learning to code efficiently but fast, you should do it in public; this is not a theory but a fact.
In this article, I'm going to explain why it works and how you can do it.
What is Learn In Public?
Learning in private: The traditional educational system is designed to be a private experience. You read books, attend class, complete projects and assessments, and then graduate at the end. We are so used to this workflow that it's already embedded into our students' minds.
When you learn in public you: create on social media, you write in notebooks and discussion forums, you also write about what you just learned in different ways like blog posts, tweets, newsletters, drawings, memes, etc.
Why is this so important?
- When you write things down, your brain absorbs knowledge better.
- Talking about it forces you to organize and understand your thoughts better.
- Your family and friends will start trusting your skills. After a while, they will start seeing you as an expert on the matter, they will come to you for advice, recommendations or to hire your services.
- Sharing is a support system: The impostor syndrome is no joke, when you are open and share your struggles publicly, you will find others (probably many others) like you. It will calm you down because you know it's normal, and it will give you the strength to continue.
- Rank better on the job portals: Websites like LinkedIn make your profile more visible when you often publish, boosting your reach exponentially.
- Recruiters will find you: Time after time at @4GeeksAcademy we have noticed that students learning in public get hired much faster. Recruiters eventually notice and contact them with job opportunities.
How to start learning in public?
- Create accounts on some of your preferred social networks like LinkedIn (strongly recommended), Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc.
- Make sure your profile in those accounts looks good: A professional profile, describing yourself as a developer.
- Every time you build a project, make sure to publish it on your social networks. Here is an example post from one of 4Geeks Academy students.
- Join #100DaysOfCode and be public on Twitter, Instagram and/or LinkedIn about it, there are a lot of people following that challenge, and you can join the discussion and collaborate!
- Open a YouTube channel: Start publishing videos about your learning process.
- Start a blog: Use medium (recommended), reddit or build your blog platform and start publishing weekly posts about the things you are learning.
- Reach out to developers you admire: If you liked a video, write something to the author. If you like a library, make a Pull Request fixing a misspelling, enhancing the documentation, or coding a new feature!
- Join events and conferences: Meet with other developers and opportunities will start coming in.
Most common procrastination thoughts:
I really doubt that, learning to code is hard and people read a lot about it and they need emotional support, just like with your testimonial you are helping a lot of people who will be interested in learning more about your story.
I'm no expert
Nobody is! I've been coding for 20 years and I still think I'm no expert, by showing your perspective on the topics you just learned you are helping other amateurs on their journey.
I don't have time
You don't have to do it all, you can just pick one or two things you might enjoy doing. Even if you are learning privately, you have to take notes, finish coding projects, and challenge yourself, so why not take some extra time to publish them? I think it's 100% worth your time.
I hope I made my case!!
Keep it up!
If you want to read more about Learning in public I recommend reading this article and all the amazing sources mentioned at the end of that article.