How do you learn programming?

A project, a project. Almost any project. Build it to throw away when you've completed it.

Any project you begin will turn out to have a stumbling block where you can't move forwards because you are deficient in your knowledge.

Now spend some time on Software manuals, Google, the forums online and learn what is necessary to remove that deficiency in your knowledge.

Fixing that deficiency, and therefore being able to move onwards with the project means you have learned something.

Keep moving past the all of the stumbling blocks and eventually you will complete that project.

"But, throw it away?"

Yes. Now throw it away. And now rewrite it using all those hindsights of all the new knowledge you now have on hand. You will now know many shortcuts, algorithms, methods, etc. that will make better code than you had before.

That is how I learned programming.

The key is on ,,love to learn''.

As long as something is interesting for you, it's great!

As they say it's a marathon, not a sprint. You'll do it for a long time, so the most important thing is that you love doing it.

Of course you should focus either on frontend/web or backend/algorithms, and it's good to make that choice beforehand, as they need quite different skillsets (more artistic / more analytic).

You'll need a project. It's hard to learn to code without something concrete that you need or want to build -- something like, "I want to make a personal blog", etc. Just doing exercises is a bit disconnected from the full flow of things, IMO.

I’ll admit, I’m not that great. But throwing yourself into a project is the best way. Books and cookie cutter examples can only take you so far.

It’s the “Ah ha!” Moments that are most fulfilling, and the insights there tend to stick the most.