Hey, what's up?
John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com.
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Today, we're going to be talking about, "Should I teach in order to learn?"
I got this question, "Should I teach in order to learn?"
This question is from Mark and he says, "Hello, John.
I'm interested in programming.
I recently started with Python.
I know the best way to learn is to teach."
Good, you are correct.
It's best way to understand something.
"Should I teach others through YouTube or blog right now in the beginning?
I only know basic things or should I wait and start with teaching after my first junior
job, for example?
Thanks."
I actually did an interview with a guy that—Mitch Tabian.
Mitch—I think it was Tabian.
I'm trying to remember.
He just told me his pronunciation of his name, but you could check out the interview here.
It should be published by the time that you're watching this video.
It's interesting.
He actually did this.
He actually just started learning programming and he is watching this YouTube channel, and
he said, "You know what?
John says make a blog and make a YouTube channel, and so I'm going to do that.
Even though I'm just learning."
He did.
In that interview, he talks about how he's had success and he's had some big clients
making some serious money that have come to him from his YouTube channel.
I think at the time that I recorded the video, he had like 4000 or 5000 subscribers and he
basically was honest and he was like, "I'm making these tutorials.
I'm learning this stuff myself."
He blogged about it and it really benefited him.
It didn’t just benefit him from getting clients and getting jobs.
He got a job as well and he actually quit his job to do this full time.
How cool is that?
I mean he's actually gone from somebody who had no software development experience to
teaching himself software development and teaching other people while he's teaching
it to—that caused him to get a job, I think, within a year, to him actually walking away
and turning away from a promotion to be a java developer at that job to going full time
teaching other people how to program on YouTube with like two years' experience.
Now, some of you say, "Oh.
Well, he can't do that."
No, he can do that.
He can do whatever the fuck he wants to do.
Okay?
That's the thing.
You don't get to say what someone else can and can't do or if they're qualified to do
something.
I mean that's my message to you.
Yes.
Not only did he do that.
I'll say this before I can get into that, which is that he learned a lot.
He learned really fast because he did that.
He learned faster than most developers would.
In the two years' timeframe that's passed, I'm sure that he has become way more competent.
Part of it is because he posted these videos on YouTube and I didn’t look at some of
the comments on them, but I'm sure he got nasty comments.
I'm sure people emailed him and said, "You know what?
Your Android tutorial is stupid, dude, like you don't even know you should be using this
framework or this thing, or you should have written your code this way."
He probably learned from that because he got feedback because he got—well, not that all
feedback is valuable, but he got valuable feedback.
He was able to iterate on what he was doing and learn from that.
There's a huge advantage to teaching, to experimenting, to failing out in the open.
I highly encourage you.
I've done plenty of videos telling young bloggers or new developers to start a blog and start
a YouTube channel.
In fact, check out my course.
I've got a free course on how to create a blog to boost your career, which is really
just a course on blogging.
That's going to help you starting out, but all the time I get emails from students in
that course and they say, "I'm a beginner.
I'm just starting out.
Can I teach?"
Yes, teach.
Even if you're wrong about some stuff like you're so right when you say that teaching
is the best way to learn.
Do it.
So what?
I mean my first YouTube videos on this channel if you go back, they sucked really bad.
My first blogpost sucked.
A lot of times I didn’t even know what I was talking about, to some degree.
You could say that.
I've revised my viewpoints.
I revised my abilities as a programmer when I blogged about programming stuff when I was
first writing code, but I still taught it out in the open.
I still did that and I didn’t teach it as if I have 15 years' experience and I know
all this stuff.
I taught it as, "Look, this is my journey and I'm learning this stuff, and here's what
I have and this is what I think.
This is either right or tell me if it's wrong."
It's one of those.
It's either right or if it's not, then you tell me that it's wrong.
Otherwise, I'm going to go with "it's right."
Right?
I think that's the better way to live your life and you could create a lot of value for
other people by doing that.
Go out there.
if you're learning, yes.
Teach.
Go for it.
Who cares if people think you're an idiot.
You're going to learn.
You're going to adapt.
You're going to get better.
Your old stuff people won't even remember.
It's not going to stick with you and you're going to benefit some people along the way.
You're going to benefit yourself by—like you said, the best way to learn is to teach.
When I say that, I'll clarify that a little bit further which is to say that the best
way to gain deep understanding is to teach.
When you teach something to someone else, you gain a much deeper understanding than
any other way to gain understanding.
Yeah, it will evolve with you.
Go ahead.
Start the blog.
Start the YouTube channel and let me know when you do and, yeah, I wish you the best
success.
All right.
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I'll talk to you next time.
Take care.