I wasn’t smart enough to learn a computer language like Python—until I got smart about how to learn it.

I was smart enough to earn an honors degree in philosophy from Harvard, but an aptitude test told me to avoid computer programming. I’m sure it was right. But then I designed a learning system for myself that quadrupled my aptitude for learning computer languages. It worked so well for me that I’ve used it to teach coding to grandmothers, cab drivers, musicians, and 50,000 other newbies.

“Mark Myers’ method of getting what can be…difficult information into a format that makes it exponentially easier to consume, truly understand, and synthesize into real-world application is beyond anything I’ve encountered before.” —Amazon reviewer Jason A. Ruby reviewing my first book, A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript

Quadruple your learning ability.

Washington University research shows that a key teaching method I use—interactive recall practice—improves learning performance 400 percent.

“I don’t feel lost and I don’t feel that I am forgetting things as I go along.” —Amazon reviewer Leonie M. reviewing my second book, A Smarter Way to Learn HTML and CSS

Understanding is easy. Remembering is hard.

Computer languages are not inherently hard to understand, even for non-techies. Remembering is the problem. If you remember all of Chapter 1 through Chapter 10, you’ll understand Chapter 11. But you don’t remember. Though you read and read, most of it doesn’t stick. You don’t have a solid foundation to build on. Halfway through the book, it all collapses. That’s when most people give up.

“I’ve signed up to a few sites like Udemy, Codecademy, FreeCodeCamp, Lynda, YouTube videos, even searched on Coursera but nothing seemed to work for me. This book takes only 10 minutes each chapter and after that, you can exercise what you’ve just learned right away!” —Amazon reviewer Constanza Morales reviewing my first book, A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript

Interactive exercises make it stick.

Research shows that you will remember everything if you’re repeatedly asked to recall it. That’s the beauty of flash cards. But technology offers an even better way to make information stick. With my book you get almost a thousand interactive exercises—they’re free online—that embed the whole book in your memory. Algorithms check your work to make sure you know what you think you know. When you stumble, you do the exercise again. You keep trying until you know the chapter cold.

“Not only do the exercises make learning fun, they reinforce the material right away so it sinks in deeper.” —Amazon reviewer Timothy B. Miller reviewing my second book, A Smarter Way to Learn HTML and CSS

You won’t get bored or sleepy.

The exercises keep you engaged, give you extra practice where you’re shaky, and prepare you for each next step. Every lesson is built on top of a solid foundation that you and I have carefully constructed. Each individual step is small. But all the little steps add up to real knowledge—knowledge that you retain.

I finally feel like I KNOW it and won’t need to look up the syntax each time…” —Amazon reviewer J. Caritas reviewing my third book, A Smarter Way to Learn jQuery

Really, it ain’t that hard.

Reviewing my books on Amazon, readers who’ve struggled with programming concepts like functions, loops, and scope write, “I had no idea these things were so simple!”

“…makes it much easier to suddenly realize a concept that seemed abstract and too hard to wrap your head around is suddenly not complicated at all.” — Amazon reviewer IMHO reviewing A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript

You don’t need to be a computer genius to learn Python. You just need to be smart about how you learn it.