- I was telling people, like, I actually don't see
any of the clips before they go live and...
(upbeat music)
How do you learn to code?
That is the question especially
if you wanna build an app or a software project
or even if you just want a bit more
productive in your day-to-day work.
Programming is one of the most powerful things
but if you're starting, it's challenging.
You don't even know where to go.
You probably feel overwhelmed with the options.
And you feel like it's probably gonna take you
six months, 12 months, maybe years to get good at it,
and I wanna share with you guys that that is not the case.
Luckily we live in an incredible world
where a lot of the deep complex stuff
has been taken care for us.
I mean I don't write coding more in zeros and ones,
I write it in this beautiful language
that looks just like English.
And that's what I wanna share with you guys today.
I was fortunate enough that when I was 17,
if you don't know my story,
I got in a lot of trouble as a teenager and
really programming saved my life
because it became my new addiction.
I struggled with drug addiction as a kid,
and in rehab I spent 11 months in therapy
is where I discovered this yellow book on Java programming.
And two things really,
programming because it became
kind of my focus, fascination and obsession,
and entrepreneurship because it also allowed me
to improve myself and focus on personal development
and really grow and challenge me
'cause I call entrepreneurship
the ultimate personal development program.
Those two things are the reason why
I'm sitting here in front of you,
and I've been blessed to have gone on to
have started five companies,
the last three were acquired,
the last two were venture backed
by some incredible investors like Mark Cuban.
I look at my life today and I can't imagine
how it would have looked if I didn't find that book,
and really invest in learning to code.
And now I don't think you need to program
especially if you're building a software company
but personally for me I have two little boys,
and they started coding on the iPad
when it was like simple little games.
I mean we live in a beautiful world where
anybody at any age can learn the fundamentals
of logic in programming and math.
To do the now, point, it's super fun for me,
we're programming robots with these things called mBots.
And look, I don't write production code anymore
because it's very inefficient,
and I probably introduce more bugs than its worth.
I have way smarter people now but I'll still
bust out my text editor and write a script
and patch together different APIs to
look at some data in a unique way.
For me it's the opportunity
to become more efficient, more productive in work,
and higher value to the workplace.
If you're not an entrepreneur,
but you just want to challenge yourself
being able to write macros and scripts
in your job from HR to marketing to sales
is a powerful thing to have.
So I wanna walk you through
how to think about programming, learn it,
and at the end I'm gonna share with you guys
my ultimate tip if you really
want to fast track everything.
So the first thing is you need to block out time.
I was
just out of
therapy, going back into high school,
and what I decided to do is just
obsess around learning programming.
And for me it was going to the bookstore and buying a book.
This is before the internet had
just a crazy amount of content.
YouTube has so many tutorials.
And there's an abundance of
schools online that'll teach you this.
I just invested $30, $40 in a book,
and I did that to the tune of almost $3,000.
Now it was my dad that
saw the passion I had and invested in it
but that's what I would do nights and weekends.
So first step is block your calendar,
make the commitment,
give yourself maybe four weekends,
and it doesn't matter if you have other stuff going on,
just say look, I'm gonna code for four hours
each day each weekend for the next four weeks,
and just give yourself the chance to learn the skill.
The second thing I would say is wire frame a simple,
and this is the key, simple idea.
And simple idea could be,
I wonder which one of my friends
like my post the most on Facebook,
or
I wonder what are the best
most liked videos on Instagram,
or think of an idea
that's relevant to you that's just simple,
and it could be ugly 'cause it will be ugly,
but just taking the time to wire frame it.
I'm talking about like
blank piece of printer paper and a Sharpee,
and drawing boxes and squares and labels and buttons,
and just making it like, oh, this is what you would do,
you would connect your Facebook account,
and then it would show this,
and we'd wanna show that information.
You need to have a wire frame for the idea.
It's great to learn the hello worlds of
the world in different programming languages,
but I think it's important,
and this is why I learned teaching my kids is
you need to connect a real world
passion to the skill development.
So it can't be just theory,
you need to have something
that you wanna learn to build towards.
So that's why two is wire framing a simple idea.
Three is choosing,
or really three is
understanding that there's three parts
to building software, okay.
It's a little complicated and you would learn this
in kind of going through this journey
but one is the front end.
It's the how do you display the information in your app.
So that's one is the front end.
The second is the back end.
How do you interact with that
information on the front screen?
When you see a form,
when you see information listed out on a page,
there's a back end layer of code
that actually produces that information
that's displayed in the front end.
Then finally there's a database.
That's the third key area.
And the database is where you store
the information in the data pieces, right.
So there's no logic per se in the database,
it's really just
trying to say, like, well, I have a user table,
and I'm gonna store the information about my user,
and then I have a Facebook page table
where I store the information about the Facebook page.
And you just kinda design the database diagram.
But those are the three big ideas of programming
is I've got my front end,
my back end, and my database store.
And you'll learn the technologies
that are appropriate for you
because number four is picking a language.
Now this is the debate
and I would love to have a below in the comments,
the debate is
what programming language should you choose.
I will tell you that I've programmed in pretty much
every programming language out there for the most part,
not every, there's tons,
but like I started with Microsoft stack,
and then I eventually found Ruby.
So if you wanna know what I love,
I love Ruby and Rails,
and you can go down that path,
but there's also Python
that's an incredible programming language,
there's PHP which companies
maybe you've heard of,
like Facebook use,
and then I think JavaScript is like
the universal programming language of the internet,
and with Node you can do a lot of really cool stuff.
So those are kind of, if you ask me
to pick four that I would suggest starting off,
I just think the syntax makes a lot of sense,
it's English-y, if you look at the code,
you could probably read the logic,
and you'll be like, oh, that how it work?
Cool, I got that.
But that's a big one.
And then finally the fifth step is to
just consume tutorials.
And online,
if you go to, I mean,
YouTube and search programming tutorials for,
and insert programming language,
or you search on
Google, top tutorials to learn,
and then insert programming language,
you will find an abundance of information online.
And if you go to a bookstore, it sounds crazy,
you can do it on your Kindle, or you can go to a physical,
I still love going to a real bookstore.
I love the smell of knowledge.
It's just for me just intoxicating.
And getting a book and just committing to just crushing,
the 21 days Ruby programming books or whatever it is.
That's the way I would do it.
Now I also wanna share a major tip,
but before it I wanna review real quick.
Number one you gotta really block
the time out to be successful.
Two, you wanna ensure that you use
a wire frame to focus on a simple idea.
Three, understand that there's
three core areas of programming,
the front end, the back end, and the database.
Four, you wanna choose a language.
So look at Ruby, Python,
JavaScript, PHP, and whatever else.
If you wanna debate below in the comments, we can do that.
And then finally it's make sure that you
dedicate and consume the tutorials.
Now if you wanna fast track all this,
this is what's happened in the last
really four or five years
is there are schools, online schools, and
in-person schools, boot camps,
workshops that you can invest.
Some of them are $50 a month,
and other ones are $20,000 for six months,
but being around other people
that are learning how to code
and going through the similar challenges as you,
and passionate enough in themselves
to invest in that kind of program,
that
is incredibly valuable.
Because I had to learn it all myself.
Luckily I had that obsession that really kind of
propelled me forward even when I got confused
and I didn't understand stuff and I kept going through it.
But if you don't have that in your world,
in your community, and amongst your peer group,
then I would definitely suggest,
if you wanna take it to the next level,
to look at investing in one of those programs online.
Again if you want more recommendations,
post below in the comments, I will answer them for you.
As per usual I wanna challenge you to live a bigger knife,
(chuckles) live a bigger life and a bigger business.
And I'll see you next week.
If you like this video,
be sure to subscribe to my channel
for other tips and tricks on how to become
a better software entrepreneur.
I'd also encourage you to join my newsletter
where I share exclusive invites to events,
free training, and other community contest.
Ready, get going,
I got two more videos queued up for you.
I will see you next Monday.