If you have clicked on this article you probably want to learn programming, but don’t know where to start, as it may seem like a daunting or intimidating task.
So in this article, I will give you all the advices and resources that I’ve used to learn how to code and some that I didn’t use, but I wish that I did.
Whether you are someone who already has some experience with coding, or you are a complete beginner and don’t know anything about coding, it doesn’t matter how old or young you are, as long as you have an internet connection, you can learn to code. Before you start programming, here are some tips and resources that you should know off.
The first thing that you need to do when starting to do or learn something is to ask yourself: “Why do I want to do this”. Seriously, you need to do that, because if you know why you are doing that, it will give you motivation. People who don’t do that are usually the ones who fail.
When you’ve decided that you want to learn how to code, take some time (few days) to think why do you want to do that and be honest with yourself. There can be plenty of reasons, like getting a better job, just wanting to understand how the things around you are made, maybe you have an idea for a tech company that you want to proceed or it can be anything that you want, but you need to know why you’re doing that.
Once when you’ve decided that you want to start learning programming you will need to decide which programming language you want to choose.
While there is no straight answer to this, some languages are easier and more useful than others. The better question is what do you want to create.
If you want to create computer games, C++ or C# is probably your best option, or if you want to create websites, JavaScript is the best solution along with HTML and CSS. For creating mobile apps, choosing something like React Native or Flutter may be the best. If you are not completely sure what do you want to create, you may be the best with choosing Python, it’s easy and it can be used for almost anything from websites, mobile games, desktop applications and much more. If you want more information, you can check my article on the best programming languages here.
There are a lot of ways to learn any programming languages, but here the ones that I highly recommend.
Watching YouTube Videos About Coding
Watching YouTube videos is for me one of the best ways to learn to code, because I tend to learn the best when I see and hear things in real-time, rather than reading, although reading is also a great option. There are a lot of great tutorials and there are also videos that talk about advices and some things they wish that they knew when they were beginners.
I have an article about YouTube channels that I recommend watching if you want to learn web development, you can check it here. These channels also make tutorials about other things like mobile development, desktop development and much more. You can find other YouTube channels that talk about things that you are interested in, these are just the ones that I’m interested in.
Build Personal Projects
Building personal projects is one very good way to learn to code because you will be building things that are useful to you, which will give you a lot of motivation. These projects that you build can be very useful and you may be able to create a whole company out of them.
Usually, the best startup ideas are the ones that founders find useful by themselves and can create alone, so if you have any idea that you may find useful, search around to see if anyone has done before you if the answer is no, you have a great chance to create a successful company.
Take Online Courses
Taking online courses is a great way to learn to code because it’s basically watching videos that are purposely made for learning. They will teach you how to build a real project and give you the skills to start creating your own projects. The only small downside is that most of the courses are not free. Here are some courses that you can use:
Read Books or Blog Posts
Reading books and reading, in general, will probably be your main way to learning because there are so many possible bugs that can happen and no one has that much time to create videos for every bug.
There are books that teach you in a purely technical way like “how to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript” and they are also books, in which people share their own experiences in coding.
In terms of blogs and websites, there are a lot of great ones that you can follow, the one that you will certainly use is Stack Overflow, on that website you can find a lot of information about almost every programming language that exists.
Contributing to Open Source Projects
Contributing to open-source projects will highly improve your coding skills because you will need to try to understand some else’s code and it will also “prepare” for a regular job because there, massive piles of someone else’s code will be thrown at you.
For contributing to open source projects, you can go on GitHub.
For the end, you need to know why are you starting to learn how to code, after that you need to choose the right programming language that suits your needs the best and then start learning with the methods that I’ve listed above.
I hope that I have helped you to learn to code and achieve your goals. If you liked this article, make sure to share it with your friends.
Also, if you think that I have missed something or you have any other questions, be sure to post your questions in the comments or send me an email at [email protected], I will be happy to answer them.