Tips For Learning Coding Languages.

[Agito]

Yo, what's up? (:

I've never really been much of a coder, more of a designer.
However, I've tried numerous times to learn languages such as CSS and PHP, all to find that I lose track of what I'm doing and/or forget what I've learned.

All I'm looking for, is to find out your best methods for learning.
Be it coding, or just general things to do with web development.

What are they?
Do you sit for hours and hours and work constantly to "drill" things into your head?
Do you buy books that take you from the first step to the last? (From basic to advanced?)
Do you read over specific online tutorials and try to modify them to do what you want to do?
Etc etc.

Please post your methods. ^_^

EDIT: Just realized this might not be the correct forum. xD!
Sorry if it isn't. >_<

[Demonslay]

I use a combination of all three.
To start me out in the basics, I used a book. You don't have to, but it did help me since I didn't know exactly whee to turn to at the time, and I really wanted to read it while I was in school (would be about the only thing I would learn there anyways :P).
Now, since I'm more experienced and such, I simply find tutorials, or opensource projects I find interesting, and read it line by line, and try to get an idea of what the code is actually doing. I then sometimes take snippets from it and modify it a bit, and test it on my own, or add it to my projects I am working on at the moment.

And then sometimes I simply can drill it into my head. :P

The best resource of each language is either to use Pixel2Life, or goto the official site of the language (if there is one, for instance, PHP.net or MySQL.com).

[cheerio]

Do not try to hard. Try whenever you feel interested or motivated, but always take breaks, never go like 3 hours straight..not good :D

[Agito]

Lol, will do.

And thanks, Demonslay. ^^
I'll take your advice.
Some of it is paying off already. :D

[DarK_AssassiN]

Thanks for the advice too. I know a good bit of HTML and CSS, but I've been wanting to try PHP. I always get bored or get lost and don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing, lol.

[cheerio]

Thanks for the advice too. I know a good bit of HTML and CSS, but I've been wanting to try PHP. I always get bored or get lost and don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing, lol.
[/b]

IMO the most fun part of PHP is getting the text "Hello World!" on your screen :P

[Scott]

all I do is just put stuff in a .php file... upload it see if it works, if it doesn't, go over it change a few things try again. Keep trying until I get it working :P

[DarK_AssassiN]

IMO the most fun part of PHP is getting the text "Hello World!" on your screen :P
[/b]

I just did that a couple hours ago :P 'Twas awesome for me, but other were like "eh, big deal". I'm going to keep at it and hopefully sometime be able to make my own scripts, and most of all be able to make useful scripts for others to use :lol:

[Bbbbrent]

I started with a few simple online tutorials, and just tried whatever I could to achieve what I wanted. I found the php.net documentation was very useful, mainly in understanding and finding functions.

At first most of my learning was from online tutorials from places like www.tizag.com and www.w3schools.com

Recently though, I bought 3 PHP and MySQL related books off www.sitepoint.com. Ive just started the second one.

Build your own database driven website with PHP and MySQL (I would highly recommend for beginners. I didn't learn much from it though)
The PHP Anthology - Object Orientated Solutions - Volume 1 (Just started reading)
The PHP Anthology - Object Orientated Solutions - Volume 2 (next in line :D)

[bblincoe]

I'd recommend the Bible series for anything coding related. I have currently read PHP 4 Bible and Javascript 5th Edition Bible. Both very good.