Teenager programmer

teen programmer

Hey, I’m a 17-year-old who has been studying programming for almost year now. I’ve taken classes, read books, used online sites, and more. I study my programming book, courses, and site. I study my programming book for 30 minutes and use some of the exercises it gives me in Sublime to create my own webpage and then I spend 30 to an hour working on python projects minutes. However, sometimes I feel as though I’m not spending enough time programming. My summer was filled with summer academic challenges and just finished getting my drone certificate license and other extra school things. I also workout an hour a day and study other things as well as reading. Normally I study for 1 hour on weekdays and 2 hours on weekends. Making the time I spend programming 11 hours a week(kinda)
Do you think this routine works? Is this a good study time for a teen who wants to make the most out of programming before heading off to college?? Thanks for your advice

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I’d worry less about the time and more about the content you end up do learning. Not all time spent studying is equal. You could learn less watching a 3 hour youtube video than you would spending 1 hour writing out and debugging code.

It sounds like your touching on a lot of different subjects and content which is a good thing if your just starting out. I usually recommend when your starting out to learn a lot of different stuff so you get context to what your doing. Its easy to start learning some specific subjects in depth, but then you start losing out on some context to what your doing. For example I wouldn’t recommend trying to become super pro at learning everything there is to learn about just HTML, since you usually need JS and CSS skills to build a website, along with more general knowledge like how the internet works, or a web browser.

If your going to school for a Computer Science degree, then odds are they will teach you the core fundamentals and concepts anyways. I’d recommend preparing yourself for that by looking into the fundamentals yourself. This is mainly so you can get a slight “head start” in your curriculum and thus make the most of your time at school reinforcing what you already started learning yourself. If your not sure what you should be focusing on, I’d look into your major’s curriculum (this assumes your going to school for a CS degree) and focus on what is listed there. :slight_smile: The main thing with a CS degree is the fundamentals you learn are applicable regardless of what you end up doing later.

This sounds like a very productive summer! Much better than most of the people I know who where already in college and still spent their summers “less productively” haha.

So, focus on the fundamentals so you can get a little ahead in your studies. Keep learning all the things, but don’t specialize. So you can more easily dive into subjects later as you’ll have the right context. Finally, just keep it up, it sounds like you have a good plan, and have stuck with it. If you want to learn more go ahead. If you can’t cuse your to busy, or to busy enjoying life, then go ahead while you still can :smiley:

Good luck, keep learning, and good luck in school!

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Welcome, @greninja71 I am a seventeen year old programming student as well. What you’re doing is great. I don’t even work as much as you do and I still get highly complimented for some of my new programming skills by professionals!

I think you’ll do great!

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Thank you for your reply. Nice to see a teenager coding

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Likewise! It’s good to know I’m not the only one my age that is willing to give coding a go.

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thanks for your advice