Do things that work for YOU.

“Automate the boring stuff with Python”. The first and last book I bought on programming. 📖

Not because it was a bad book but because it didn’t align with the way I absorbed information related to practical skills like programming at that time. It wasn't right for me at the start of my tech journey.

One of the most important things in any tech journey is finding resources and pathways that align with your way of learning. That may differ from the people around you.

Things that did work for me:

👩🏾‍💻 All in one learning platforms that taught theory (in digestible chunks), then showed examples then gave space for me to try before moving on. An example of this is CodeAcademy.

🛠️ Building projects and applications I actually cared about and would use. This helped with keeping my attention and focus even when things became challenging. My first project was a website for content creators to manage posts.

🥾 Eventually joining a bootcamp, for structured learning plans and access to mentors and others working on similar projects.

🗓️ Tracking and journalling my accomplishments. It leverages the fact that as humans we like to see ourselves progressing. Documenting the hours I had coded for and the tasks helped with that.

A book that I have found very useful in my SRE journey (further down the line) is the Google SRE books. For conceptual frameworks like the SLO and SLI models its a great resource. Still and always will be a big fan of books!