Three years ago I wanted to learn programming. I tried dozens of books, online courses and YouTube tutorials. I felt like I was floundering around aimlessly in esoteric coding terminology for that first year.

Three years later, I have a summer machine learning coding internship. Here were the three things that I found most helpful for expediting my learning curve:

Go through one complete course on the syntax of one programming language. Codecademy is my go to tutorial resource suggestion. Pick a project you want to create. Learn how to get good at Google searching for the code you need to make the project do you want it to do.

Step 3 is the one most people don’t tell you about: 90% of coding is just Google searching. Steps 1 & 2 just help you refine what exactly you’re trying to look for in step 3.