that you'll go through becoming a programmer,

but also why knowing these stages

can help you make better decisions for your career.

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All right, welcome back, my name is Tim Buchalka

with another programming tip of the day,

and we're talking about the four stages

that you'll go through in your journey

to becoming a programmer.

Now let's get started with the first one,

and the first one is unconscious incompetence.

So what that means is that when you're starting out,

the decisions are hard to make,

and for example, you don't know languages,

frameworks, an area of interest

that you want to get into for programming,

how easy and how hard these different areas are,

and basically where to start in fact.

You know, even things like what's involved

in a particular language, or you know,

basically getting to a certain level.

So using an analogy here, or an example,

consider that maybe you're starting out

and you're thinking okay, I want to become a programmer.

I'm interested in artificial intelligence

or machine learning, for example.

At the moment, if you're at this stage,

then you don't know the prerequisites

to get into artificial intelligence or machine learning,

or even if programming is for you at that early level.

So you may not recognise this either,

so you may not really recognise or acknowledge to yourself

that you don't understand this,

and you may think you know, but basically, to move on,

what you need to do is figure this out

and you need to learn and recognise

that you don't yet have all of the answers,

and also, very importantly,

you really do want to acquire those skills,

basically the skills you need to basically proceed.

Now when I get asked a question from students,

and I get asked this quite often,

students will approach me and sort of say,

well okay, I'm starting out, I've just started

my first course, so for example my Java Masterclass,

can you give me the next three courses

that I need to take after this,

and I wanna get to artificial intelligence

or machine learning.

Well what I say to them is, basically,

look, it's too early to do that.

Finish your first course first,

and then start looking at making a decision after that.

And this is really dealing more with

this unconscious incompetence,

because you don't know what you don't know

at this point in time.

So you need to go through, get some basic training,

before you can move on, and that's why I say,

early on in your programming career,

don't try and make long-term decisions

on where you're going and what you're doing.

Focus on the basics, in this particular case,

would be learning a programming language.

All right, so that's the first stage that you'll go through.

The next one is what I call conscious,

or what's called conscious incompetence.

Now here, you've taken yourself to the next level.

You now know and recognise that you don't have

the skills you need to become a programmer,

or to get into that specific area of interest,

but also, you've got a real want,

you really want to acquire these skills,

and you've recognised that there's a value there

for you to learn these new skills.

That's really important

that you're sort of acknowledging to yourself,

okay, I haven't got these skills,

I've got a lot to learn, but I want them.

You know, you're really saying to yourself,

I really want to learn these skills.

So basically, you're acknowledging to yourself

you don't yet have the skills,

or you really don't at this point in time,

and during this process, when you acknowledge that,

you're gonna start programming and learning,

and you're gonna make tonnes of mistakes.

And basically, making tonnes of mistakes

and getting frustrated and wanting to give up,

this is all an integral part of this stage.

And let's use an example here,

equate it back to programming so it makes sense.

Let's assume that you've recognised now

to become a web developer, that you need to learn something,

you need to learn.

You've figured out now, when you first started,

your very first time you said to yourself,

before you touched a line of code,

I wanna be a web developer, you had no idea,

that was going back to step one.

Step two, you've done a bit of training,

a bit of research, and you now acknowledge and say,

oh wow, okay, I need to learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript

as a prerequisite to at least some level

before I can hope to actually start learning

other more advanced frameworks et cetera

for web development.

So you've done that, basically you've gone through

that very basic process of learning

some fundamental skills, or at least acknowledging

to yourself that okay, I need to learn these skills,

and you're sort of saying,

look I haven't got those skills

but I'm prepared to learn it.

So basically, what I'm saying there is,

there's a process to go through,

and here you're acknowledging to yourself

that you do wanna do it, you've done some research,

you've figured out, in this case, that example,

HTML, CSS and JavaScript would be three core skills

used typically by web developers,

and you can make a start on that.

So basically, you're recognising now

that you need to understand those three core skills,

but also, more importantly, the value of doing this,

why you're doing this,

and you've made the decision to yourself

to go ahead and do it.

And you recognise that at this point it won't be easy,

but you're saying to yourself,

look, you understand there's a process

that's gonna take a while,

there's a lot of stuff you're still trying to figure out

at this stage, but you know that you can actually

get there, basically.

So that's the second stage,

and moving on now, the third stage,

is conscious competence.

So basically, what that means is,

and why don't you continue with

the web developer example here, because it's a good one.

So here now, you can finally get

some of that stuff working.

So you know, perhaps you now understand some HTMl,

looking at the web developer example,

HTML tags seem to make sense, or at least some of them,

and some of the JavaScript code may actually make sense,

you can sort of start stringing together

small bits of code,

but your brain hurts at this point in time

from all the concentration,

you really have to focus and concentrate hard

on understanding this,

and you've got this worry in the back of your mind

at this stage, if you're gonna remember all this stuff,

and if you're not constantly immersing yourself

in training and practise,

some of this information's going away.

So you're still uncertain at this point in time,

but you have progressed.

You're now able to understand some of the concepts

you're learning and string together perhaps little programmes,

but again, you've got those worries,

and basically concerns in the back of your mind

at this point in time.

But the bottom line here is, at this point,

the training, perhaps a video course,

if you're taking a video course or a book

or whatever it is, it's now starting to make sense,

and you're now basically on the road still

to getting to that fourth stage.

All right, so the fourth stage now,

is unconscious competence.

So basically, this level, it's really the level

where you want to be at, ultimately,

this is what you should be shooting for,

and this is where programming effectively

is second nature for you.

So here you've practised so much,

you've done so much training, you've applied this code,

basically to get to this level you've done that,

and at this level you're now actually finding

to a large degree that programming is easy.

It's not necessarily always easy,

but you're feeling much more in command,

you're not struggling to remember things,

a lot of the things you can sort of remember

off the top of your head, you can string together,

put together code, you're not feeling

you have to concentrate so hard all the time,

things are coming to you automatically.

So as you're typing code, for example,

you're thinking okay, which algorithm do I need to use here,

and it's coming to you, so you're understanding that.

You're maybe at the stage where you feel

that you're even at the level now

where for some things, you feel you could teach

this material to other people.

But certainly, programming at this level

is so much easier for you, and perhaps you're even

looking back and wondering why you thought about giving up

in some of the earlier stages.

So you got frustrated perhaps at an early stage,

and you know, at this stage, if you reach this stage,

you're finally saying to yourself,

wow, okay, I can actually get this,

I'm enjoying it, I'm understanding,

and you really almost can't believe

that you were ready to give it away

you were so frustrated at earlier stages.

Now that's not to say when you get to this stage

that you won't have other challenges to overcome.

For example, if you pick up a new programming language,

even if you're at this stage, there will still be some work,

there'll probably still be some elements of frustration,

but it'll be a heck of a lot easier

because you've been through the process

and you've got the core skills,

and basically a model for how you can move forward

and learn and sort of understand these skills.

All right, so a summary of today's video.

Keep at it, make a commitment to persist with your training

and your practise, and know ahead of time

that when you're entering this journey,

there's gonna be ups and downs.

I also suggest you practise and study regularly.

It's really important that you do that

and do the exercises in courses,

try and create little programmes for yourself,

try and adapt those programmes.

If there is a challenge or there's some code,

that you see me or whatever book or video course

you're going through, giving you,

try and firstly understand that code,

but can you adapt that code, can you add to it,

can you add some functionality,