Learning a new language is always hard, so is learning a programming language. However, there’s always a good way to learn something. What I like to do is to take my time, meaning I section out my studying time with lots of breaks. It’s a common practice for many students to do everything in one day, but that’s only the best way to torture yourself.
Plan things beforehand. Make time to study the new language, everyday. The trick is you only do it for 30 to 40 min each day. That gives your brain to absorb the information and transport them into your long term memory (which is very helpful). If you have more than 40 min each day, then take at least 10 min break after 30-40 min of studying. If you can sit through more than 40 min, good for you, but not good for your brain. It will only give you pain and headaches. Take water breaks as much as possible because your brain needs lots of water to stay fresh and running.
Sleep on it! And that is the best way to learn something. You might not believe it now, but your brain works more when you are sleeping. When you are in your REM sleep, your brain re-learns everything you learned that day (which sort of explains the weird dreams you have). If you were to think your brain as a computer, sleeping is like compiling your source code to make it something useful. There’s even a studying method where you take naps between each lap of learning and revising. Take some nap and let your brain do its job!
Be consistent with it. This is the hardest part of learning anything: being consistent. We all make New Years Resolutions to lose weight/gain weight, and we are consistent for only ten days and quit. We start to make excuses and not do the things we planned to do. Reward yourself if you finish up a lesson for the day, just because you were consistent. Lowkey punish yourself if you didn’t finish your lesson, and do more lessons the next time. It’s like cutting a cake into even pieces, and that’s how your studying method should look like, too. Try to imagine learning as eating that piece of cake. If you eat the whole cake, you’d end up hating cakes forever. Instead, eat one piece of cake each day, and enjoy and not hate that cake.
Repeat, repeat, and repeat. Another cool fact about your brain is that it loves patterns. It loves creating patterns. The closest example I can think of is typing. When you use the key-board a lot, you type faster, not needing to look at your hands. It’s because your brain has creates patterns for your fingers, and sometimes you don’t even think about where certain letter is on the key-board. We write and type our names a lot. And, you know that when something asks you to type your name in, it happens really quick. It is repeated so much that you don’t even have to think about it. So, when you are learning something new, repeat. Re-write the code, the command lines, and function calls. And I repeat, make your brain happy, so that you can be happy.