Fire Studios

Learning to code and develop websites or applications can be a difficult process, but when you couple in the pressures of being a student in school, it makes everything that much more difficult to grasp and shove into all the empty nooks and crannies of your mind. You can easily ease off the pressures of school by applying some of the same disciplines you gained when learning your programming language.

1.) Use Semantics in your notes

Semantics may seem like a large and complicated word, but all it means is how you arrange and write your code, such as: line-spacing, indenting, commenting, syntax highlighting, and use of white-space. These same techniques can be applied to your notes in the exact same way you would your code. Use headings and separate out a new line for important or different information, when you have multiple characteristics of something, use a list and bullet each piece, this way when you're reading or scanning your notes before a test you'll be able to read it faster and remember more of the info.

2.) Information has a hierarchy just like Code

Teachers and Professors want you to learn and retain every bit of knowledge thrown at you, but not every bit is as important as another, use a hierarchy like you would in HTML with the heading tags (H1, H2, H3.) to set a level for each piece of info, make the most important information bigger, a different color, or both even, create a system that you can understand at a glance and makes since to you.

3.) Memorization

If you haven't noticed, the more of a coding language you learn, the easier it is to learn aspects of that language and others. It's because you memorize information exponentially (at an ever increasing rate). But it's not just for that language, it's applied to everything you learn as well. That means if you take the time to learn one language, then second will be easier to learn, and the third even easier, and so on.

4.) Multiple methods for a solution

CSS is, probably, the most versatile with multiple ways to achieve a desired effect. A quick example would be underlines, you can either use the "text-decoration: underline;" or "border-bottom: 1px solid #000000;". If you take that concept and apply it to your classes you'll start to achieve better results because you'll be applying different theories and ideas to the concept your teacher/professor is introducing, causing you understand how the original works more, and how you can cut a few corners and achieve the same product.

Some of you may be wondering what languages help with what so here's a list that shows what areas each helps with:

• (X)HTML - Structure, hierarchy, usability
• CSS - multiple solutions, memorization, usability
• JavaScript - Math (in general), Structure, Linear progression
• PHP - System, speed, prioritizing, memorization
• Ruby (on Rails) - Memorization, flexibility
• C, C#, C+, C++ - Structure, system, memorization
• jQuery, Prototype, MooTools, etc. - Notes (semantics)