Programming and playing chess

There are lots of things in common between leaning how to program and leaning how to play chess:

First, you need to leaning the rules
For programming, the rules are the grammar of your language of choice. You can not hit the road without knowing them, but this is the easiest part.

Nothing can replace realworld experience
That's why some gurus claim building software is a craftsmanship rather than engineering. While there are tons of tools, smart IDEs to assist you, software design masters reach their level by years of practicing.

Pattern is shortcut
Then how do we improve ourselves quicker? Lots of people know how to play chess and keep playing for years, but have very little improvement on their skills. Well, if you do not know it yet, patterns can be the shortcut. If you study how chess masters deal with common scenarios, you will improve much faster than your friends how do not.

So far, it is all about individuals. Multiplayer game is much more complicated, and so is professional software developement in corporate.