Learning to code requires a lot of focus, patience, practice, and self-confidence. You need to learn to deal with your frustration, ask for help and let us do our Job.  4Geeks Academy is all about giving you the mentorship, the exercises, the coaching, the projects and the tools to process easier, faster and better. Offering coding classes that not only provide the necessary information but also, skills that will help anyone to improve their life.

A large part of these techniques aims to read less, but learn better and more efficiently. For example, in our part-time coding Bootcamps, the key is to manage time. Apart from the knowledge, the key to being a great coder is having the disposition to improve every day and apply strategies that will make you more productive and efficient.

The Pomodoro Technique

Have you already know something about this approach? One of the best-known techniques in productivity is the Pomodoro technique, created in 1980 by the Italian, Francesco Cirillo. Its effectiveness has been proven in students improving their performance.

To carry out this technique the first thing you need to do is assigning a list of tasks; continuously, you must divide the study time into 25-minute intervals, which are called "Pomodoro". At the end of this time, it is necessary to have a 5 minutes break. When four Pomodoro's are successfully reached, the ideal is to have longer breaks of 20 or 30 minutes after each Pomodoro.

What advantages can the Pomodoro bring?

  • Learn to manage time more efficiently. Taking full advantage of the first 25 minutes to dedicate them completely to the activity you are doing without distractions will force you to fully concentrate until the alarm sounds.

  • Understand the importance of effective breaks. Studying without stopping for long periods is exhausting and not efficient. With the Pomodoro technique, it is necessary to take 5-minute breaks in which you should forget about the activity and renew your mind.  

  • Greater concentration. As we mentioned previously, having Pomodoro's of 25 minutes each and breaks, will reduce the possibility of distraction and your work will be more efficient. 

  • Have a balanced schedule. Is common that students spend many hours doing the same activity which they may interrupt constantly due to various distraction factors, causing the loss of vital hours of study. Applying Pomodoro, you will not have wasted your time, conversely, you will be managing it more properly than ever before.

We normally recommend everyone that if you hit a wall when completing a project, try 15min by yourself, and then STOP. Stop and ask us. Stop wasting your time. We have the answer, the mentors and the help you need. We will guide you through and we will help you solve your issues with the project. 

The Dual Coding

The theory of dual coding was proposed by Allan Paivio in 1971. It is based on combining the use of images and words. Creating mental images and put them on paper, will help effectively in the learning process of any student. Infographics, timelines, diagrams, bullet points, among others, are ways of study based on dual coding.

It has been shown that students can improve their way of understanding something by adding visual elements to a verbal description. It is important to emphasize that any way of illustration used must be significant so the idea can be fully understood and easy to be remembered. 

How to apply it daily? Go to Breathe Code. At first, you need to be clear about the topic. Everything we show you are backed up by images, videos, explanations, infographics, and even Emojis!  Now, if you need more, and you will need more for sure, start searching for images that are related to it. Read the information, understand it, and then, you can start making some sketches. Once you have some illustrations, make comparisons (between images and text), and the learning process will get easier. 

The purpose of this technique is to be able to remember and understand the information accurately and be able to write about it or redraw everything effortlessly.

What we think about it. What does 4Geeks Academy think about these techniques?

Pretty much we let you choose the method that better fit your expectations. We are here to give you everything we know to let you choose, adapt and grow. 

Here is a list of what we think it could work: 

  1. Embrace the lifelong learning mindset. Learn it because you like it, because you find it interesting, or at least because it's useful (and it is!).

  2. Practice Practice Practice. We will never stop repeating this. Practice it’s all that matters when you start learning to code;

  3. Learn by doing. Always play with the code while learning;

  4. Grasp the fundamentals. As elementary as they may appear at first, programming fundamentals always needs to come first: the better you understand them, the easier it is to learn the more advanced concepts;

  5. Ask for help. Raise your voice. You’ll need it;

  6. Seek out more online resources. There’s a wealth of content - 4Geeks BreatheCode platform

  7. Think with code! To develop a true understanding, you need to run the code and tinker with it.

  8. Take breaks when debugging - Pomodoro!

This list is not something that we created out of nowhere. It’s a common understanding and what a lot of people believes it works. We support it, work following it, and we will be with you along the way until the goal is being reached. 

To get started and apply for your part-time coding Bootcamp, contact us today.