Full disclosure, I am currently not in a programming/coding job role. I have worked in I.T. for 20+ years in several different roles and recently started getting serious about a move into web development.

However, I am in the phase of teaching myself development so I believe the timing is relevant and pertinent.

I wanted to share my take on a slice of this phase because it took me so long to truly understand it and move through it, and I see the same question asked all over the place which tells me other people are struggling the same way. For a long time I thought it was a me issue and chalked it up to personal shortcomings.

The question usually asked in the online ether is "What is the best platform for learning X?". Answers usually follow in the tone of "ABC platform is best because...." and "DEF platform is best because...". Which is great, the Q&A is not entirely the problem here. No one is providing wrong answers overall but they might be providing the wrong answer...for you.

Instead, if you are like me and in this "self-teaching phase", I strongly suggest you rewind and do a personal inventory by re-framing the question from "What is the best platform for learning X?" into more personal questions of yourself like:

How do I learn best? Can I absorb theory and retain it easily? Do I need theory and hands-on practice in small chunks? Do I need to watch examples by others? Do I need to make a lot of mistakes and learn from them?

How do I approach thinking about systems? Can I take and retain small chunks of information and be comfortable with the blanks being filled in over time? Do I need to know the comprehensive why or the how behind how things do or don’t work in order to build the mental connections and assemble comprehensive knowledge through iterations of learning?

Really understand your learning style. Knowing these things will help you to identify "What is the best platform for learning X FOR YOU".

That, in the end, is the key question. What is the best platform for learning X FOR YOU.

In my experience this likely will not be a journey with a clearly defined point A to point B road map. And that’s OK. It is a process of identifying and collecting resources that are assisting you in completing a task or solving a problem.

You will encounter platforms that guide you through a career path and some that don’t. You may find that Instructor A is very vibrant and detailed and it resonates with your learning style. Instructor B may fall completely flat and cause you to disengage.

You may find that the format that one platform uses facilitates your learning but another one doesn’t.

None of this means you can’t learn the topic. Instead of getting frustrated about not learning the topic on that platform, figure out what you discovered about your learning style from the experience. What about Instructors A and B worked for you and what didn’t? What was the format used in the platform that worked for you? Now pursue that style and keep working.

I also want to suggest it’s entirely OK to start on one platform and move away from it after you’ve started. Try other platforms, other resources, until you find what works for you. Subscribe to platform mailing lists and wait for deals to come around and give them a try. The key is to not get frustrated. Understand what it is about a platform that doesn’t work for you before you move on and jump into the next one. Build your learning profile and find a solution that caters to that as much as you can.

As you start to build your learning profile you will be able to more effectively evaluate platforms before you dive in, or at least ask more effective questions.

In the end you might find that one single platform doesn’t work best for you but a collection of a couple might. That’s ok. Use your resources.

My own journey to date has taken many twists and turns and some of that involved getting humbled and lowering expectations of myself along the way. Pride in what I thought I should be able to learn and retain easily served as a roadblock to actually learning and I had to honestly accept what I could actually learn and retain easily and then work on how I had to go about the rest of it.

In fact I’m still learning things about how I learn best and accepting that not clicking with one teaching style doesn’t equate to some facet of inadequacy on my part.

Some of the insights I’ve learned about how I learn best:

• I don’t do well with theory heavy teaching
• I don’t do well with watching other people code and not coding myself
• I prefer a lot of hands-on coding, I learn well by watching things break. I need reinforcement of learned topics, I need to tinker
• I prefer to know the atomic to holistic relationships, how does this gear affect the machine and what does that look like when it breaks
• DO NOT GLOSS OVER THINGS. This just leaves me with questions and my brain wont want to move forward until I get the answers. Saying "You can Google this later" or mentioning something and saying "This is not important for what we’re learning" is a red flag for me.
• I don’t like single topic based learning, I want a path, a progression. I want to end up at this point, walk me through getting there. I don’t want to have to build a curriculum.

As to the path I’ve taken there are bits of it below. I want to make clear, while I do mention courses that I no longer use, it is not a judgment at all of their value. It’s just that they did not work best FOR ME. On some I’ll go a step further and say they did not work best for me AT THIS TIME, I simply wasn’t ready for them but one day I very well might be.

Hard copy books (tons of these, still on the shelf). Tendency was to read a page or 10 here and there and nothing ever stuck, eventually collected dust. Set them down and come back 2 months later and have to start over before abandoning them altogether.

Udemy courses - (tons of these) Some good, some bad. Not enough interaction or avenues for questions. Collected these like the books. This is where I learned over time that I didn’t jive with single topic focused learning.

Community College course - This was a while back but it was shallow, overly controlled (no real coding assignments, working through problems, figuring out why things happen). Got the cert but that was it.

As I started to cobble together my learning style I narrowed down:

Zero to Mastery - This is one of the "not best for me at this time" ones. Love Andrei as a teacher and all the resources it provides and tech paths that are laid out. There were some topics that I wanted a deeper grasp of at the time but it wasn’t available. I’ll likely return to this one at some point, once I’ve solidified that deeper understanding.

Frontend Masters - Took a free intro boot camp from this one and loved one of the instructors. Liked the career paths and curriculum. Got into one of the paths and an instructor for a large chunk of it just kinda fell flat for me and my brain was just disengaging. But another "at this time" for me one. Likely return to this one later

The Odin Project - Free resource, checked this one out because why not? I honestly never would have thought this style of teaching would work for me. A LOT of reading but also a lot of hands-on work and building stuff, but in small chunks. Realized I really pace myself better and more beneficially with this style, meaning I permit myself the time to slow down and experiment and tinker before moving on. This one is really resonating with me currently.

Code Academy - To be determined. Picked this up on a deal and looks to be the same style as the last platform which will be great.

Claude Code AI - Can’t say enough about this. I don’t use this for coding examples or anything of that nature. Primarily if I’m going through a subject and a question arises that I can’t readily find an answer to I use Claude. It will provide me with examples and dumb things down if I’m not getting it. Really great for those topics that are just not sticking, I can find an explanation format that really helps.

In conclusion I guess the moral of the story is don’t let impostor syndrome work against you, don’t let pride work against you. Understand what works for you and pursue those avenues. Don’t feel guilty if one platform doesn’t work, keep searching. The goal is for YOU to learn and the best way to accomplish that is to understand how YOU do it.

Be your own learning advocate. Guilt free.