The best way to learn when MOOCs and books aren't enough?

[shagie]

Programmers.SE 10k link & Stack Overflow version of the question.

Provide advice to a new programmer who is having trouble programming. He or she has been reading books and sat through half a dozen MOOCs but still doesn't feel like he or she understand the fundamentals of the language (Java / C#).

So,

• How do you do problem solving?
• When do you create a method?
• What are arrays?
• What do you do when there's no idea for how to solve a problem?
• What is a constructor and how to use it?
• Where to find help?

The answers of "Read books" or "just start coding" aren't acceptable.

This may need to be broken into smaller pieces.

[AldenPeterson]

Is this intended to be someone who does not have a programming background (hoping so if an example is "what are arrays?") or also applicable to more experienced people learning newer tech?

[shagie]

@enderland I'm going to say I'm not exactly sure. I'm just working from the question body, Glen has an answer in there (yep, 10k rep to see it) that I believe would be a reasonable starting point which really is a "go code" answer though with some other advice.