Motivation and number of languages?

I say finish a track then move on the different track. Plus do personal projects.

Hi Liam,

I have the same problem as you...I distract really easy. My solution has been changing my state of mind. If I am working on a specific track I finish 3 videos and/or labs/quizzes and then I get up and stretch, grab a drink go the bathroom etc.. I purposely make myself stay off google and you tube until I finish for the day.

As far as what to take...well that is going to depend on what you really want to do. Web Site design/development is completely different than ios development so you need to decide which you want to focus on. I would recommend that you not try and learn web development and ios programming at the same time. Pick one and stick with it until your done then move on to the next thing you want to learn.

If you are going to go Web development just follow the track. HTML then CSS then JavaScript. Once you get those three under your belt you can then go into the more in-depth classes on each of those.

I really have no idea on ios programming, never had any interest in it but I am sure just following the learning track will get you everything you need :)

Hope that helps

1. Do a little bit at a time. I see a lot of people make the mistake of going through entire courses and a few weeks later they can't remember anything. Repetition is your friend, once you learn something go to Codepen or open up an editor and play around with what you learned. Take it apart, rebuild it, and see how far you can go with it.

Also, set time to learn. It is easier to hold yourself accountable when you block off the time vs just doing it whenever. I'm very easily distracted like you, so I make sure to hold myself to a time block. It might be an hour of time or I might say between 9:00am to 12:00pm, I am going to work on learning Node.

By holding yourself accountable you are also developing a very important personality trait when you are a programmer and that is personal accountability. I can't tell you the number of people I've come across that lack the ability to realize when they've made a mistake and won't own up to it.

1. I strongly recommend learning one thing at a time, and learning it really well. If anything the fundamentals of programming are going to matter more than language specifics, especially because those concepts exist across the board when it comes to computer science. Logic rarely changes, only certain paradigms change between different languages. That isn't to say you can't learn HTML/CSS/JS at the time, so long as they are closely related you can learn them together at the same time.

2. Instead of asking what languages to learn, ask yourself "What Problems Do I Want to Solve?". That will do a much better job of telling you what to learn.

people like Luke Pettway and I live for this stuff! :D

Well at least you are taking ownership it....for most that is the most difficult part so you are already way ahead of the curve! I had to do the exact same thing then I pulled my head out of butt and got to studying. Another problem I had was that I wanted to learn it all so I got impatient with whatever I was on and wanted to move on to the next topic. That created the issue of getting lost and not understanding the more advanced concepts which lead to me surfing facebook, twitter, youtube, etc... Finally I decided that I was going to learn the basics forward and backwards and not move on until I was really comfortable. It was hard at first but after a few days I was focused! I haven't looked back! Also if you are going to go the web dev route I would get an account at codepen asap. It is great because you can use it as a sandbox and practice what you have learned anytime you want w/o having to set up a web server! :)

I hate mornings and personally I don't perform well early in the morning so I do my studying at night...but that's me. The point I am trying to make I guess is do your studying when you are strongest :)

good luck!

I'm always amused when I read through threads like these that the students at Treehouse have really no idea of the sheer number of computer programming languages that exist now or have existed historically.

http://bluebones.net/evolution/evo-prog-lang.png

http://www.digibarn.com/stories/desktop-history/comp-tree-medium.jpg

http://i.stack.imgur.com/6xwCG.jpg

Here's Wikipedia's list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages