Rebirth of T-rex

I was asked to give guideline and opinion on how to study IT.

Firstly, I would like to make myself clear that I am not an expert, just an amateur who are learning, just like you. :) I wouldn't say giving you guideline or advise, but sharing some of my experiences.

I found that the main thing is you have to be clear of why you are in this field and what do you want to achieve at the end of the journey. I have many juniors who get into IT because IT is cool; IT is so popular; their parents want them to take IT... etc. At the end of their day, they join sales and marketing field. So, what's your goal?

In IT world, you have to get yourself as exposed as possible, in terms of knowing what's happening around. You need to be resourceful in terms of when you need information, where will you head for the reference, eg. Internet, eBooks... etc.

Master the concepts. In programming, there are many basic concepts which we learn in college or university level. We tend to ignore it after the exam. Many of these are very important and useful concepts that you need them when you apply it in your job. If you have better grasp of these concepts, it helps you a lot in designing and writting better system. I experienced this when I was preparing for my Sun Certified Java Programmer Exam.

Get your hands dirty by practically apply things that you learn. There are many tutorials or articles that explain certain technology, many of these provide sample code, which you can try them out to understand it more.

Just my two cents.