Just like with any programming language, the best way to learn it is to suffer through it and work on as many projects as you can. Debug, debug until you become comfortable enough to say, “ah yeah, I know what this is,” or “I know where to look for this.”

I never liked coding. I remember taking C++ in college and thinking to myself — why? Why do I need this? Why is this so incredibly boring? Please get me out of here. Literally dying of boredom.

Then later, I took Dynamics and then Controls in college, and I fell in love with the power of what I could achieve with MATLAB. I could build cool models and simulations to make my system behave—or not behave—as desired. So I had no choice but to get good at MATLAB/Simulink and appreciate what these tools could do for me as a control systems engineer.

So anyways, if I had to go back and do it all over again, here’s what I would do:

• Take good notes and save all my projects, scripts, and models in a GitHub account or portfolio (or both). You’ll be grateful you did when it’s time to apply for internships or jobs.

• Take a MATLAB online class or just watch a free YouTube playlist and follow along.

• Find 5–10 small projects to practice my skills and apply everything I learned.

• For Simulink, I’d do the same—watch a playlist and find projects to work on.

• Challenge myself with each project. See it sorta like a video game, where I level up as I complete each one, making it a bit more challenging every time.

For project ideas checkout my project guides here:

PROJECTS