Do you have little to no experience with programming? Want to learn as a hobby or maybe even to get ahead
start on a future career?
Well, I'm going to share with you how I, a dev of over 5 years now who has incorporated programming into my everyday life, got started.
I'm also going to share how you can use programming to make your life easier in the future.
Take a step back
The first mistake you are going to make is getting in WAY over your head. Programming takes some time to get a grip on, and then you can start really getting in deep. You may already have some crazy project you want to start on. I know I initially wanted to build an open world MMORPG where thousands and thousands of players would all be playing. But I had no clue how to do that, or even where to begin. I also didn't have the kind of money you need to invest in a project like that.
What you really need to do is just start small. If you already have a language in mind that you want to learn, then go check out a super basic video online. I watched a YouTuber by the name of "The Coding Train" who makes tons of awesome videos on the "P5.js" library. It taught me a lot about the basics of JavaScript and really helped me understand some fundamental ideas of programming that are universal between all languages.
"Sentdex" is another REALLY great YouTuber who makes incredibly simplistic tutorials about many of the super useful python libraries that will help you expand your knowledge about the Python language. He also has an entire series dedicated to teaching those who have never touched programming before about the wonders of Python.
Online resources are your FRIENDS
I spend just about as much time on Google as I do in my IDE, or "Integrated Development Environment". Programmers are problem solvers. Sometimes that means searching for answers. Reddit has a host of subs with the naming convention "r/learn<insert_langauge_here>" where you can ask any and all types of questions specific to a language you are working with. Whether it's a problem you are having trouble with, or just a general question, you can ask real programmers who know what they are doing.
Documentation is another key aspect of learning how to program. "Libraries", as they are sometimes called, are basically just code that other developers have already written that you can use to extend your code. It gives you more power when developing and can make tasks that might seem extremely complicated to do at a low-level much easier. But, how do you know how to use this code? Documentation baby!
Documentation, or "docs" for short, are complete descriptions of what you can do in your programs with the library. Not only is learning how to read the documentation a required skill, it is something that you acquire by physically doing it. There are libraries for generally all social media sites that allow you to interact with them through your code. Whether it's retrieving data from them or automating your accounts, you can do it in just about any language. And the more popular a site is, the better and easier the documentation is to use!
Program!
Arguably the most important is to get hands-on! Start as soon as possible and keep at it! You simply cannot learn how to program without actually doing it! One of the very first projects I actually worked on was making a bot for a popular communication platform for gamers. The bot was super simple. Drop a prefix in the chat with the name of a command afterward and the bot would perform a task or send a message into a channel in response. Super basic, but the libraries for this are extremely high-level. That means that a lot of the complicated low-level code is abstracted away so that you can write shorter, simpler scripts that can do so much!
If you want a really easy way to kickstart your journey, you can watch just about any video on youtube that goes over the absolute fundamentals of programming and the syntax of a language. Make sure to always take notes at this stage, or even follow along with the video. Afterward, you can play around with what you have learned and maybe even figure out how to entertain yourself for some time before moving on to the next video.
My Language Recomendations!
Here are my recomendations for some really basic programming languages that are fairly easy to set up a development envirement for and will also let you expand into bigger projects later on once you get a grasp on them.
Python
Python is a server-sided langauge. Meaning that it runs all on it's own, and it can do this just about anywhere you need it to. Whether you are on Windows, Mac OS, or any flavor of linux, you can use Python. Python also has some of the simplest, human-readable syntax to date. It will be a breeze for you to pick up and has tons of support from it's growing community.
JavaScript
JavaScript is a language originally created to run in the browser. That means a client-sided code. However, I would actually stay away from web programming and Markup Langauges at first. This is due to the fact that server-sided development is much easier to get into. NodeJS is Javascript, but it's abstracted out of the browser and made to run server-side code. You can set Node up on Windows, Mac, and with relative ease on Linux if you so desire. It's also syntactically the exact same as Javascript for the web, so taking what you learn when working with node and moving to the web, later on, will be no trouble at all.
Other languages...?
No... I really would recommend sticking to those two. Neither are strongly typed object-oriented languages that are much easier to set up than some other languages. If you really really wanted to use another language, I wouldn't recommend starting with anything other then C# or Java. They both require langauge-specific interpreters that double as IDEs to develop, and they are strongly-typed.
While C# with Visual Studio will let you expand into Unity later on, and Java can let you create standalone clients and even plugins for MC Servers, I would still recommend starting off with the lighter languages mentioned above. Both Java and Visual Studio are well over a gig inside. While Python and Node are much much smaller so you can jump right in.
Some IDEs that you can use to get started are "Notepad++" and "VSCode". While Notepad++ is not as feature-rich as VSCode, it still supports a plethora of languages and has everything you need to get started. VSCode comes with a great looking default layout in dark-mode and has a large community behind it making plugins for you to use. While out of the box, the application has some basic IntelliSense to help you while developing in a variety of languages, there are plugins in its own dedicated plugin store that you can get to help extend the functionality of the IDE to suit your needs.
That's all folks! Reply below for specific help, or add me on IM.
You can also always shoot me a private message here as well. Thanks for reading!
Thanks for taking the time to write something like this. I have coded before in C++ but I stopped doing it like for 8 years already, wanted to start again but was looking for something new. Thanks for your opinion and recommendations.
I've been thinking about starting up again. I appreciate you writing this!
I'll start soon, excited
thx for told us your experience i started with python this year, and online sources are my best friends too, here in Colombia there isn't a real good way to learn to code, learn english was the best decision that i have ever take!
