Lets go on a coding adventure!
In this example, lets pretend that you hike through a local woodland area near your home for an hour every morning. On your hikes, you take a journal and make notes about your experience. For example, you write about what the weather was like, what exciting things you saw, or how you felt about the hike. You don't like to re-read through all the journal entries you have collected, but you would love to have some sort of program where you can enter some of that data, and then it shows you the trends in the data over time.
This is your hypothetical woodland trail. Lovely isn't it, I'd hike there every day.
With that goal in mind, the first step of creating your custom coding adventure is to do some research to see if what you want to happen is a real thing. For example, if you come to earth from space and discover that lemons have juice inside that is tasty when mixed with water and sugar. Your next step may be googling if there was an easier way to get the juice out of lemons. That would be beneficial before you start trying to create a lemon juicer from scratch. For this search, I think the best place to start is with definitions based on facts we know already. For example, we know that we want to store lots of specific data topics and track the trends of those particular topics over time. Say we remember from our high school science fair days that those data topics are called data sets. Now we can start our adventure by Googling data sets.
From there we can click on the Wikipedia article that pops up and start to read. Not to far into the article you will see mention of databases and how they are a requirement of data sets. Now we know whatever we create, it will involve a database. Now we can make a more specific Google search to find out what code is used to create databases. Looking at the search results page, you will see the word SQL in many of the titles and the mini descriptions without even clicking on a single link. That tells us that SQL is somehow involved in the process of coding databases even though at this point, we are not sure what SQL is.
Next, we can search “what is SQL” or “how is SQL used to create databases." You could even search for “what coding languages are used along with SQL”. Googling any of those things is going to get you learning code that is more specific to something you want to do or are interested in than what you would get just Googling “how to learn to code”. You can also google how to learn SQL and you will find lots of free resources to get you started.
When you learn code that is specific to you and your goals It can be easier to maintain a higher level of enthusiasm throughout the highs and lows of your coding journey.
Keep calm and debug on.
Once you start to learn enough about what is required to create your database you can start setting goals. You may have an over arching goal of creating a database connected to a phone app so you can enter in your infomration on hikes. A goal like that will consist of lots of small goals the first of which may be to learn the python coding language, or research cloud computing. When creating your goals, big or small remember to make your goals SMART.
S is for Specific!
Instead of saying I want to learn to code, say I want to use MySQL because it's free and open-sourced to create a database. I also want to learn PHP, HTML/CSS, and JavaScript to help build my database and an excellent web page to display my data.
M is for Measurable!
That means creating a way to track your progress that is quantifiable, or able to be expressed or measured as a quantity. For example, you can tally the number of hours you spend researching cloud databases online. Then, you can use that number as a measure of how much you have learned. So for every additial three hours you spend researching you gain more knowledge, but if you spend more than three hours you will not retain any information. With that in mind you can plan to spend three hours a day for three days a week to maintain an optimal learning level.
A is for Attainable!
That just means making your project practical for you. For example, if you are not a runner but you have decided that you want to run a marathon. It is not practical for you to start jogging for an hour a day since you have no experience running. It is however practical for you to start walking for 15 minutes a day after work. The more comfortable you get walking 15 minutes it will then be more practical to bump it up to 30 minutes. Then you can work on running for 5 minutes and walking for 15 at a time. Before you know it you will be marathon ready. If you had of started the other way and ran for a hour every day you may have lasted a week. Then its very likley you would have quit and never hit your marathon goals.
R is for Relevant!
That is the whole point of creating a custom coding adventure in the first place. When you have a specific goal you want to reach because you care about it, vs a goal you want to reach because someone mentioned it may be a good idea, you are more likley to reach it.
T is for Time-Based!
Setting time limits on yourself is all about accountability. Its a way to keep yourself accountable to completing your goals. If you decided to learn Javascript and you give yourself 6 months to make a product you like using the language, thats a good timeline. If you decided to learn Javascript and you invite all your friends and family to a reveal party to show off whatever you have made with Javascript, thats a time based goal.
