How to become a non-humanitarian in 10 months?

     Good afternoon everyone! I have long wanted to close the gestalt and write about my modest success story. But my hands never got around to it... And suddenly I realized that if I don’t write today (now!), then “I’m on guard and everything is lost”! Facts in brief :

• I am a philologist (linguist) by training.
• I have never done programming (in computer science we learned to type with 5 fingers - but I never learned)
• In July 2014 (at 4 am) I suddenly realized that I urgently needed to learn Java!
• Soon I started studying JavaRush - the most successful of my finds)
• In December 2014 (almost) I entered the JavaSchool of one large IT company in St. Petersburg (by this time I was at level 18 in JavaRush)
• In February 2015, he finally entered and successfully graduated in April, having defended a small web project
• In May 2015, I got a job at the same company as a junior - hooray!
• In September 2015, as part of the International Programmer's Day, I successfully passed a comic “test for non-humanists” - yes!
• And today (11/12/2015) I passed the Oracle Java SE Certificate (7.1) test with 83% (pass from 63%)
• So it goes!)

     By and large, all the necessary components of success have long been known: motivation, work, etc., etc. You can read about this in many books now. But this does not explain the main thing: how is it possible...? Well, how about using these all, of course, useful skills? I don’t think my recipe will be universally useful for everyone. But I will be pleased if at least someone finds it interesting)
     The fact is that I am a rather aggressive opponent of all kinds of violence. And including above yourself. As you know, if you force yourself to do something through force, then the effectiveness of this is much less than when you do the same thing with enthusiasm. However, what gives pleasure rarely turns out to be a source of total benefit - ask any professional athlete! So laziness, willy-nilly, has to look for accessible compromises between “wants” and “needs.” But in our case, if you “want” to become a Java programmer, then you “need” to learn Java, there’s no escape.
     Here is a plot list of my activities : At first I liked to read one of the tutorials for beginners (in Russian) and copy tiny programs from the book with drop-down windows in Swing. I don’t argue, at first it looks very impressive and from the very first day you begin to feel like a “Java King” (this term is common among some of my colleagues). But by the middle of the book, I began to not understand a lot, and interest gradually began to fade. As I remember now: August. Hot. I'm lying on the shore of Ladoga. I'm reading about arrays. And arrays don’t suit my head - even crack them! "-Knock-knock! -Closed!"
     So I started giving lectures and solving problems in JavaRush. Wow, cool! I love learning while playing! I also really like getting levels and tracking my rating according to statistics! But that’s not the case: some problems take a long time to complete. There is often not enough information in lectures, and in other sources it is not so easy to understand. Each next level is more and more difficult: 1.5 weeks, 2, 2 and a half...
     So I started watching videos on YouTube. A good channel is "Tell all about PC". Especially for the humanities: short videos (5-10 minutes each), told from the very beginning (from the binary code and computer structure), simply and with pictures! I watched 150 videos... Then the path twisted and got lost in the jungle of graphical interfaces.
     Then I switched to Golovach’s channel! The man is fire! He tells the story clearly, to the point, in an incredibly interesting way, with memorable examples and a characteristic accent (I studied Ukrainian for a year at the philology department)! Moreover, since I am an auditory learner, and educational audio on programming practically does not exist in nature... I downloaded Golovach’s video, converted it to MP3 and went and listened, listened. Of course, in some places, looking at the board was not enough. But nevertheless, Golovach is simply a teacher from God - honestly! - voices everything, explains and repeats it several times (for especially non-technical comrades). And what’s most amazing: in addition to improving my understanding of how Java works from the inside, I also began to feel how IT works in general. Golovach told us how the careers of developers differ from those of testers, what types of companies there are, what their specifics are, how it is here and how it is in the USA, and many, many useful little things. I think that it was during these long walks through the cloudy autumn-winter St. Petersburg weather “ under the whisper of chatty antiquity ” to the sounds of Golovoch’s lectures that it was then that the first neural connections of a “non-humanitarian” kind began to form in my brain.
     And, of course, I read. Although neither Eckel, nor Horstmann, nor even Joshua Bloch gave me such undisguised pleasure as the “Head First Servlets & JSP” that was later needed.
     And I solved tests on Quizful. At the moment, I already have 23 tests there (that do not require a rating): including the administration of Windows Vista)) But seriously, this was necessary mainly to prepare for the Java school, where you need to solve a small test for admission. By the way, my result then was the worst of the passing ones (50%) - now I prefer to be overprepared than underprepared) And what to hide, I like to solve tests (and even make up my own)! You immediately see your level and can evaluate the result (feedback). Here you look for errors, analyze them, and correct them. Of course, this is not the same as practice, but, in my opinion, it is also a good way to learn.
     To summarize, I would like to say that, in my deep conviction, the most important thing is the total number of hours of conscious practice (“vigil”) devoted to the subject being studied (in my case, Java). You can write programs, read books, solve tests, watch videos, listen to audio, communicate with experts - and even smoke beans (provided they are coffee beans, the use of which expands your knowledge of Java ) .
     In conclusion, I would like to wish success to everyone who has started or is about to begin the path to becoming a (super) Senior Java Guru. After all, all our wishes come true! Sooner or later. Anyway.