8 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Programming

[@damianmehers9576]

I've been programming for 40 years, still loving it. What Paul shares here is gold. If you are starting out, listen to it (at 1x speed!).

[@natgenesis5038]

How your eyes doing ?

[@damianmehers9576]

@@natgenesis5038 Had to start wearing reading glasses in my late forties. Take breaks, look into the distance from time to time, lunchtime walks in nature are a great refresher.

[@gjermundification]

I find the hardest part to be to unlearn.

[@gjermundification]

@@natgenesis5038 at age 48 vision is still 20:20, started hacking as a hobby at age 8; on a VIC-20, then moved on to C64, A500, A3000, PowerBook 140, and so on 15-18 hour days have been quite ocmmon.

[@natgenesis5038]

@@gjermundification wow maybe because I got myopia astigmatism that why I blame computers ???

[@thinkinting]

1:15 1st advice: things go away 3:40 2nd: it’s ok to forget things 5:10 3rd: CS degree is not needed. But need to work to get an equivalent 7:18 4th: you will always be learning 8:41 5th: need to learn how to learn Primm: predict, run, investigate, modify, make 14:04 6th: a little bit of meth goes a long way 15:49 7th: resilience 17:15 8th: more than just coding.

[@shawnsmith7009]

You may want to edit the 6th item. 🤣

[@thinkinting]

​@@shawnsmith7009 WDYM? I don't see anything wrong with it :) wink wink

[@godwinebri]

😂😂

[@OttoFaerber]

Hello Paul I am 64 now and for the past year I have been programming iPhone apps using SwiftUI. I started programming about 40 years ago. In machine language hexadecimal on eprom :-) In this long time I have used very many programming languages. I have a lot of fun programming with SwiftUI. I am retired and do it for fun;-) However, I must say that many things on other platforms were much more comfortable to program 20 years ago. A table ( grid ) a diagram a view structure ( navigation stack ) and many other things that are new to iOS and SwiftUI have been much easier to use in other languages for a very long time. But it's great fun for me to start here basically from scratch and as you say , the best teachers are the mistakes you make. Thanks for all your videos and information, you really helped me a lot to continue . Otto

[@guitarparamount8575]

Hi Paul 👋 just thought I’d drop a quick comment to say a big thank you to you for creating all this fantastic and quintessential content on iOS development - it’s really been the holy grail for how quickly I’ve been able to grasp concepts in Swift. I’ve been working at Lloyds Banking Group as a graduate iOS developer for approx 10 months now, and your teaching style and superb explanations have really made the difference in my learning and development alongside my job. Cheers🥂

[@edem1619]

This is one of the best videos I’ve seen on this topic… pure gold. I wish I saw this a decade ago, no regrets, but man…would’ve saved a lot of time (and heartbreaks). Every new dev should see this.

[@alikin]

You started programming 25 years now? Wow! I started programming 25 minutes ago, and thanks for saving me such a long period of time!

[@ChristopherCricketWallace]

those freakin' dynamic programming interviews! My bane.

[@AlanW]

As someone who has been at it about as long as Paul, he's clearly thought a lot about helping others, every bit of this advice is spot-on.

[@feldyrios]

Paul, I have been coding for over 30 years and I just want to thank you for this video. It reminded me of so many things that I have continued to deal with over the years. It’s all as true for me today as it would have been 30 years ago. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[@smenor]

You kinda touched on this but one thing that really makes me appreciate Swift is knowing / having worked with a bunch of other languages including more esoteric ones like Haskell and seeing so many of the good ideas from those in one place here

[@merlingrim2843]

Been doing software development since 1978, and have forgotten more than most people in other professions will learn in their lifetimes. My one tip is to embrace the pain of learning new stuff because it is the one thing you’ll face for the rest of your career. If you push through the pain and achieve flow, life will be good.

[@СергейБезногов-т6у]

I learned Golang, I didn't use it, but when I started to learn Swift, structs and protocols didn't scare me, because we have them in Golang. You need to know several languages to understand terminology, in some languages we call interfaces protocols. And in Kotlin and Python we call structs data classes

[@juniorcastro8517]

This helped a lot, Paul. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. And thank you for all this content you've offering us. As a student in Brazil, it is SO hard for us to get good materials about Swift and stuff, and even harder getting our hands on a Mac to learn. This video helped me a lot, you have no idea! Great stuff ❤

[@ciscoserrano]

You've changed my entire life Paul. You have no idea.

[@Notkdenben]

What’s funny is that I’m guilty of pretty much everything paul mentioned, tutorials, buying the books, and all. I started learning swift in the last quarter of 2021 and either I wasn’t serious about it or I just got frustrated and thought it wasn’t something I could learn. I started up again in April of 2022 and have been putting in the time and reading the books. I’ve struggled to understand where I should start sometimes but I decided that I needed to just it down and and start reading and applying. Thanks for all the work you do. I’m not upset about buying all the books either. Even though objective C is “old” I’m still excited to one day get around to learning it, but first I need to tackle swift.

[@raimitis]

Great tips. You assured me that I am not doing anything wrong and made me confident that it is ok not to remember everything, not to know everything, learn by watching video turtorials.

[@ivancantarino9719]

Paul is amazing. He gives so much to the community

[@Drewbydrew]

13:14 I just started an internship at a big tech company, and my manager told me what convinced him to hire me was how I honestly answered a question. He asked how confident I was in C++ on a scale of 1-10. I said “Honestly, currently, maybe around a 4? I worked with C++ a couple years ago in several courses but I haven’t used it a lot since, so I’m rusty. But I’m confident I could pick it back up quickly and get to a 7 or 8. I won’t try and claim to be at a 9 or 10, because I haven’t used it outside of the classroom.” He told me that not only did that show I was honest, it showed I was willing to put in the effort to learn. I’m also pretty sure that that was the reason he went a little easier on me during the programming test portion of that interview.

[@Scanito]

Hey Paul, I am a senior programmer and wish I could give to many others this wise advice as clear and simple as you do here... Audience: If you are young and/or just beginning this exciting path, PLEASE watch/read Paul's video at least two times!!

[@tushardalvi1991]

i love you Paul Thanks for the video...this is good for freaking every Dev out there not just iOS dev.

[@joseblanco9834]

Thank you so much for your advice. I’ve been working on the course 100 days with Swift (UIKit) and I’ve been enjoying it a lot. I’m thinking to do the SwiftUI course when I’m done. Thank you so much for providing all this insight and helping us grow as people and professionals. I will be forever grateful.

[@MikeGranberry]

Outstanding review. After two years of trying to capture my business process knowledge into an independent consultants’ toolkit (iOS app) and knock off the 20 years of rust that occurred while I managed consultants, the “back to basics” that you illustrated has given me hope. It was clear that my new programming issues were founded in my unrealistic expectations of success. I need to use your eight tips as my foundation for my daily focus. Thanks.

[@yolioms]

A big thank you, Paul -as a newbie myself (9 mo in after a 40 yr hiatus), I greatly appreciate the thought and care you put together to deliver this super helpful & useful information -cheers!

[@CallousCoder]

Totally agree!!! I started 40 years ago first in basic then assembly and whatever afterwards. I don’t like coding anymore. I find that I am building the same shit in Different language and different frameworks but all in all the same stuff. But the coding part is also for me just the implementation (a necessary evil and when I can pass it off to a junior or medior I’ll do that.) To me the design and architecture of a solution is the real programming.

[@georgeboahene3254]

Thank you Paul. I really needed this. Shout-outs to Swift and Taylor.

[@kevinhoctor62]

Luckily, the CS instructors I had at Erie Community College were excellent. They taught me core CS concepts in a language-agnostic way. It also helped that this was 1981 and my only language options on the Pr1me minicomputer were FORTRAN IV, COBOL, Pascal, and assembly language, but I tried never to focus on a language. Now, 40+ years later, I’ve written code in a dozen or more languages and appreciate each one for teaching me to think differently. Excellent video, Paul. Cheers!

[@jonothen2212]

I am in middle of doing IOS courses, and these advises really kinda like boosted my motivation even more, but i am glad I owned a mech keyboard Thank you Ser!

[@poluxsaurus1454]

Could you elaborate on the mechanical keyboard?

[@romancebula1263]

Thanks to you Paul (and few others ;)) I’ve started working as a programmer - I started learning Swift when I was 38 years old! So it’s never to late - your teachings are the best! Every one who is starting to learn swift should start with 100 days of Swift / SwiftUI!!! Paul - you rule 💪🏻💪🏻👨‍💻

[@evangelosspyromilios5994]

38 here, also applying for internships :)

[@romancebula1263]

@@evangelosspyromilios5994 Keep on going ! Be strong no matter what 💪🏻 I’m working as a iOS dev for a 1,5 year now and I cannot imagine to do anything else now 👨‍💻👨‍💻👨‍💻

[@evangelosspyromilios5994]

@@romancebula1263 Thanks mate!!

[@kellimurton]

I needed to see this. I’m 36 & just starting my journey now. Also a teacher & a mom so I don’t have much spare time to dedicate to learning but I am determined to do it & Paul’s videos have been super helpful so far!

[@nicktendocreep]

I love programming and Its so fun. Ive been feeling discouraged about finding work though. this kinda pumped me up to keep learning and growing my skillset though. thank you for the pep talk

[@micnubinub]

Great video man

[@nileshjdarji]

Awesome advice. Though I am a Mechanical engineer, in my journey of learning to code, I have encountered everything you just said. It is very true.

[@daryayilmaz]

Thank you so much for this video. I am happy to watch it in the beginning of my way. Full of insides, power and motivation.

[@timsonner]

Hacking with Swift is one of my top gotos, on par with Stack Overflow. All those code blocks you can’t remember are just a search away. I’ll never forget the day when I stopped following tutorials and started coding. It was like riding a bike with the training wheels off, looking around like “Wow, I’m actually doing this, I’m coding.” Such an amazing feeling and confidence builder. Thank you Mr. Two Straws.

[@mlamintamba]

Thanks very much for the advice Paul. One more thing link for the mechanical keyboard ⌨️ please.

[@aaronr2248]

Phenomenal tips! I've gone through so many of your videos and can't adequately state how appreciative I am of your commitment to being a thorough and enthusiastic teacher. I've subscribed to HWS+ as well and just can't get enough of the wealth of information. I think your comment in this video about not having a time machine but having new generations of people who want to learn and share knowledge speaks volumes about you and your desire to help people reach their potential. The mark of a great teacher. Thank you for all of your efforts, Paul.

[@yoellev5191]

This video is gold, thank you for sharing Paul.

[@frankielee713]

Oh God this hit home with me Paul. Almost prophetic confirmation to my next move, as I listen to your tutorials while on my ship over and over. I need this skill to be home with my family. It’s time to move forward. On the the SwiftUI portion of your 100 days. Time to be resilient and push through the dip my friend. Thank you for your words and speaking from the heart. Your genuine approach to guiding your followers is a whole vibe. One last thing… I was looking at mechanical keyboards two days ago haha so crazy. Keychron Q3, which do you suggest?

[@Pobe16]

0:17 🎶 If I could turn back time… 🎶

[@subarnakhorshed8112]

I can't thank you enough for your tutorials. Just recently started swift and learning from your playlist. ❤

[@justinseal3803]

Paul, as always your wisdom just SHINES and manages to inspire me. Thank you for this video! There are a ton of them out there, but I enjoy your tips and insight.

[@twostraws]

Thank you! 🙌

[@KFrench1123]

I love your holistic and compassionate approach, Paul :)

[@kristoferlinnestjerna4556]

Hi Paul, well done! You really highlight the right things/ideas we as older programmers need to convey towards those who come after us :) tip top job!

[@torarinvik4920]

I found that the fastest way for me to learn a new language is doing easy coding katas. Another one is translating programs from one language to another.

[@htmoh8115]

I just started coding as a total newbie, it's a lot to take in. Although I had a long break. I restarted. I was planning on documenting my journey.

[@christostsangaris4785]

Been in the industry for 10 years now and i couldnt agree more! 1000% (i am good with maths as well 🤣). Ps: PRINT will always be the ultimate debugging tool!

[@joee8227]

Great video. Thanks!

[@markday3145]

That was really excellent! You hit a number of things that I might not have come up with, but I instantly recognized as important as soon as you said them. One of the "soft skills" that I think is super important is communication. Reading (and understanding what you read!), writing (so others can understand you), listening, and speaking. I will be forever grateful to one of my high school English teachers. The class was supposed to be about Literature (reading novels and discussing them), but he quickly realized that we were lacking the skills to really comprehend and understand what we had read, so he switched to teaching that instead. Learning to organize my thoughts, both incoming and outgoing, has been incredibly important. Learning the CS concepts and their names is very helpful for technical communication. It took a long time to appreciate the "general education" requirements in college. Learning about other things invariably "bleeds over" into programming. For example, I've rarely used more than elementary school math, but I ended up solving one problem with some number theory. Debugging skills have been really helpful. I've never seen that taught explicitly. Most of mine were acquired while watching over someone else's shoulder, watching what they did. I learned C from the original K&R book. While I have used other programming languages for a handful of specific tasks, the vast majority of my paid programming has been in C, and would be instantly recognizable to 40 years ago me (perhaps with the exception of function declarations). I suspect that's a product of working in the same technical area (Operating Systems) all that time. Perhaps that constant change you described is more prevalent in other areas (like app and web development)?

[@jamirajamira7303]

I don't do Swift but I find all the points you made in the video to be absolutely spot on. Do you plan to do more videos related to general programming topics?

[@andre.unsal.13]

Great video, I think it really helped me see how to slow down and appreciate what I'm working with instead of rushing into the next featureset or framework.

[@subinrevi1]

Great advice Paul !

[@davidagyakwa288]

it will be Nice to hear your story growing up. But thank you so much for the advice

[@Weeble_Warbles]

That part about not focusing on memorizing what I've learned really struck me. As someone who is learning sometimes I feel as if I'm not smart enough for this line of work when I have to go back and reference something 4 or 5 times.

[@anmolkalra17]

Really incredible tips shared here but bonus tip 😂😂😂

[@casperes0912]

I think the most valuable course I've had at my CS degree has been Compilers. After you write your own compiler it just becomes so much easier to see through any language you pick up and figure out its structure quickly. I also really value my bachelor project where I made an OS (mostly just a kernel - it did have a shell and primitive file system and a few utils but it wasn't much beyond the kernel) and that too helped me greatly in understanding lower levels of systems. I like having written a fair few algorithms in assembly, not cause I'll ever really use assembly but because I like having a fundamental understanding of how things work. And frankly, knowing assembly can be a good debugging tool. You ideally want to have debug symbols for whatever you're debugging, but I have been in situations where I haven't had that available, and just got dumped asm instructions and register values; And it's basic assembly knowledge, but knowing that the return value was in rax when we hit ret helped tremendously. Oh and also; Get a Mac or a Linux machine. And start using the command line. If you must be on Windows, get WSL running.

[@carlsmith8593]

The compiler thing is so true... I once taught at a bootcamp, and we didn't have time to do compilers, but I would try to take an hour to summarize how to lex and parse expressions (using a little calculator grammar) with every student. Otherwise, _every time_ they see a compound expression they haven't seen before (like `foo().bar`), they say "I didn't know that was legal", as though every operator-combination must be specifically supported.

[@overpowerpwnd8389]

Thank you so much for everything you do! You are the great person)

[@theiosdeveloper555]

Thanks Paul!

[@thomasfahlke4253]

Hello Paul, thanks for all the good advice. One question: Which keyboard do you use?

[@kubamilcarz]

Shoot! I had discrete mathematics this year, but honestly I ignored it. Should I like hit the books this summer? Is it worth it?

[@NationalParkiOS]

Awesome advice! Loved the last bit too! Such a game changer.

[@ok2pro]

For me, I wish I knew programming is about making complex simple with abstraction and familiarity.

[@onncu]

Thank you so much Paul! I've been learning for 2 years, i just started yours "100 Days of SwiftUI"

[@renatofraga0774]

Hi Paul, thanks again for the amazing content.

[@HominisLupis]

Paul you are a superstar to the community, besides being a damn fine tutor. Thank you, as always, for doing what you do.

[@gstrieder]

After 15 years of programming I share your experience 100%! I only wish this insight of learning would be shared by all people, not only developers 😉

[@TheStuze]

Thank you for this! making swift my first language . Looking to build my first project soon.

[@ammarahmad9004]

Thank you very much for these advices, you always inspire me Paul, my advice is spend time think how to structure your code to get less time to write it, and I acualy I learned that from you too Pual when you said we spend more time in reading our code than write it, so I think it's better to spend more time structure our code than write it.

[@prestonparker3407]

Dude this is also just a lot of great life advice in general wow. Thank you so much I really connected with this.

[@gjermundification]

19:46 The tactile feedback will be giving you affirmation as to when a button is pressed enough, rather than having to wait for the character to show up on the screen. I love the question is the screen fast enough to run some high spec FPS; the real question is the screen fast enough to run vim. Then again for let's say XCode or VSCode there is GUI involved and the tactile feedback will be even more precise compared to when the visuals decides show up. My personal favorite is Apple Extended Keyboard II, but I also have Das Keyboard BADASS 4 cherry mx brown for some of my computers.

[@immmax]

The bonus advice is the best! 😂😂 Thanks!

[@СергейБезногов-т6у]

I would be more radical. Historically math and programming were related to each other. Now it's different subjects. You do need to have more knowledge in maths than driver or shop assistant to become very good mobile developer. And you do not need theoretical knowledge of algorithms and data structures unless you create new programming languages. You have to know built-in data structures and their advantages and drawbacks

[@Johnged15]

This was great advice. Thanks for sharing Paul.

[@angelsv]

11:57 What I do have it's a bunch of courses on Udemy that I added because they were free at the time but never touched, the analogy of the gym it is really good. Cheers.

[@MoAdel92]

Thank you Mentor

[@alithejumbo]

Coding since 10 years and I totally on all this video

[@jarmenkell5644]

Great job bro

[@FacelessProjects]

For shareability and timeless value, this might be the best video of yours that I have ever seen. It is a perspicacious encapsulation of everything I want my brother to know as he embarks on his development career. Thank you. 🙏

[@sdmf195]

Paul , thank you so much for this, I seriously loved it. Now - how about a recommendation for a mechanical keyboard? ;)

[@twostraws]

I used to use a Majestouch Ninja, but now I switched across to WASD because I get more control over the finished result. I actually have two: one with blue switches for actual work, and one with red switches + damper rings for when I do videos, because it's quieter.

[@sdmf195]

@@twostraws Thank you :)

[@__hannibaal__]

In 1995 there are no internet, hard to learn some thing like c++, by myself 100% no teacher, but i failed, so i oriented to mathematics, physics and mechanics, and i did well, but still my old ambition, so these last 2 years is start learning c and c++, ( i have idea about another languages like gwBasic-of my childhood-, Fortran and pascal ), mathematics gave me good understanding of languages.

[@vulpixelful]

Thank you for bringing up the math. Since I'm *not* doing it to study for an interview, it's more enjoyable than I thought lol I got an entry level keychron mechanical keyboard, but I definitely want to make the leap into a customized one with a weighted case later. I'd imagine it would be heavy to carry around, but so grounding when typing 😊

[@Gael_AG]

high five! 200% agree with u

[@chrispy104k]

17:55 OMG, so true. I've met a few jerks in my lifetime. I should add that you have been inspirational in your approach to teaching. 👍 I've certainly learned a lot from you.

[@danyalahmad2097]

just lifted my Cs degree a year ago as it wasn't helpful so I'm learning to code for iOS development and today is my first day to start and these tips are very helpful but I'm not even 5% on mathematic 😊

[@eman31683]

Love your mechanical keyboard comment at the end. I'm learning swift right now and one thing I always wonder is, I've learned a lot between you and others. But how do I know when I'm ready? Also, with me living in a state (America) that doesn't have a huge populous city, I struggle finding junior opportunities.

[@ivanshevy]

Thank you, Paul! Appreciate the amount of your work!

[@in2minutesorless64]

What a great great video! Thanks for this.

[@markslowe]

Great video

[@AmitBiswastunebox]

Hi Paul, can you please make a tutorial on “ State Machine Design in Swift” ? Please please

[@nicoleminsss9227]

U are a motivation for many people thanks for it!! 🙂

[@dotnetdevni]

I am same 20 years but in .net i wish I had stuck with objective c and ios and learn native and not waste time on cross platform.

[@abdorizak]

Hi Paul i would like to thank you so much for playing a big part in my ios learning 👏👏

[@larschristiansen3136]

Thanks Paul, this should be helpful to all beginner coders. I recognize some hard learned lessons that I could have avoided if you and KZbin had existed when I started 45 years ago. One question: The mechanical keyboard recommendation. Besides the satisfying click of such a keyboard (for those who remember the good old IBM keyboards) , are there factual reasons for your recommendation? (or is it just be a matter of taste ?)

[@raimitis]

I have the same question 😀

[@pgong415]

Oh my god I am so lucky to watch this clip NOW, too important ! Great! But I love the mechanical keyboard though.

[@imamad]

Thanks Paul.

[@ndavid05]

Thank you for sharing these amazing infos with us! I’m a little confused….i have just started to play Swift playgroud to learn coding, but after i heard what u said about common data structures made me a little confused. Can u please tell me where should i start from to learn programming? ( i am very very begginer- though i’ve learned a lot about func while, conditionals etc on Swift playground). Thanks!✨

[@siwel97]

Hey, concerning the mechanical keyboard, what for?

[@kosnowman]

This is very valuable lesson

[@georgeboahene3254]

Mechanical KeyBoard. Got it. 👍

[@myrden]

What mechanical keyboards would you recommend at this point, 2024?

[@godswillumukoro8908]

whats a great affordable mechanical keyboard