Should I be learning everything at the same time?

I'm not putting in nearly 100 hours, but have been enjoying trying several different areas somewhat simultaneously.

Focusing on many different areas at a shallower level will allow you to find where your natural skills and interests lie without diminishing your enthusiasm as a whole.

Ex. maybe you're better suited for front-end work that, while technical, has more to do with visual design and usability. If you started off with a deep dive into a back-end server-side course, it might turn you off to the idea of learning the content as a whole, before you could discover what you're really into.

Once you get a taste of several different areas, it will be easier to pinpoint the ones you want to really focus on.

Amanda,

Ultimately, the answer varies person to person. It really depends on your learning style.

A good way to find out what does or doesn't work for you is to test yourself constantly. At the end of the week, try putting together quick little projects that either utilize all of the things you've been learning together, or individual projects that focus on specific languages/subjects. You'll very quickly notice where you have gaps in knowledge, or where things are fuzzy, and depending on the degree of success/failure across the different subjects, you'll be able to better gauge whether or not you can/should take on more or fewer subjects at a time.

Personally, I think that a sort of mix is a good way to go. In the world of coding, whether you're a web developer, software developer, etc., a lot of your time will be relearning things that you knew before but haven't used recently enough to still have retained all the little bits of specific information from them, so even just familiarizing yourself with a lot of different languages and subjects at the same time can be of great benefit (as Brian has also stated). You don't need (and I'd say it's nigh impossible) to become an expert in all the different languages; you'll have time and be expected to have to research things during production. Figure out what it is specifically that you want to pursue, and definitely put a focus on that, but realize that a) you'll probably need to know a few other languages alongside what you're studying anyway, and b) a lot of these languages share a lot of similarities, and learning one almost always makes learning another exponentially easier.

So, the real answer is the more vague "it depends on your learning style and what you hope to accomplish", but the better answer is "yes, it's totally fine and a good thing to learn multiple languages at once, so long as you're able to retain enough information in however many are important to you to be able to work in them comfortably, and be able to know where to go to research the pieces that you can't always recall".

Hope this helps!

Erik

Amanda,

Like the internet all of the topics you mention are connected to each other either directly or indirectly. However, all learning is not created equal. Let me explain further...

To maximize the value of the time you will spend on acquiring knowledge you first have to define your focus. So, the first question you have to be able to answer is... "What is it that you wish to accomplish from your studying"?

Once you have that answer you can then narrow the scope of what you should be learning first. People usually learn something in three different ways:

1. Seeing - someone shows you how to do something.
2. Hearing - someone tells you how to do something.
3. Doing - you engage in "hands on" participation in attempting to do something.

In closing...

1. Determine what it is that you want/need to do/learn.
   
2. Take the instruction course relating specifically to that topic/subject matter.
3. Start at the beginning and building off of the first basic steps.
4. Enhance your learning and the retention of what you have learned by employing all three methods of learning which are; seeing - (watching the videos and seeing how someone else does it), hearing -(listening to the instructions given), and doing (typing in the code in either the projects as you go along or creating your own files of code which you can build off of later).

Notes are good but just remember everything you do in life just involves taking a series of steps. To be successful at anything in life you just need to take the steps in order. Knowledge is knowing what that proper order is... whether building a house (you start at the bottom foundation), fixing a machine (you trouble-shoot by going through a series of questions to determine the source of a problem), or forming a relationship with someone (you get to know someone initially and then build on the relationship from there).

Good luck and I am happy to see your enthusiasm to learn. Determine your focus (goal) and you will become extremely competent.