I would like to study programming, but I don’t know where to start or how. What would you do? Bootcamp? University? YouTube courses without certification? Online courses?
What language are you interested in?
Edit: Check out this site.
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Thanks! I was thinking about the Python language. But I think I need to understand the basics and logic of programming first; I haven’t studied that yet.
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That site is a good place to start.
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i bought books about programming. i started with python and now im learning android development with kotlin
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I used an EdX Harvard course for Python. The teacher was easily understandable, however, if you don’t get the scholarship, it’s quite expensive.
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Im the furthest thing from an expert but ive been coding for about 6 years. Im not the brightest person but I usually get it done.
I started with c++. I read a book by one of the co creators of the language. I was lucky enough to be working in a tech job at the time that had all the software and I just started really slow.
Free code camp and udemy have some good stuff for beginners. Ive done boot camps from them and also did courses.
Nothing beats practice tho. Whatever you do i would make sure it has many practice components to the lessons.
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Check out Udemy. They have a range of courses for thousands of subjects, including programming.
The courses are constantly on sale too. They’ll say the course is 100+ dollars but you can get them for like 10-20 dollars when there’s a sale. Don’t buy if it’s not on sale, they ALWAYS have sales except for the random day after a sale ends.
You can read reviews and see which is the highest rated course for the topic you choose.
I used Udemy to get my drone license. I originally bought a 150 dollar course that was so long and dry I couldn’t pay attention. I bought a Udemy course on drone certification, studied for a weekend and passed. (Of course this is for a drone cert not programming, one can’t learn programming in a weekend.)
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I learned VBA as a job I had restricted our use of useful languages - long story
In my current job I am now proficient in R, SQL and the associated technologies like GitHub, AWS etc
Python is next on my list and I am probably about intermediate with that one right now
Have always learned on the job and my education is not typical which means I have some enhanced skills in terms of storytelling and making an argument etc
These things are just as important
I have seen many a project die because it was not communicated effectively and never got used
some of those are mine in the early days
The coding makes you more efficient if you can do it yourself but things like domain knowledge are equally important
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Programming is parallel to solving word problems in mathematics.
Goal.
Steps to attaining goal.
Programming each step.
Then testing and fixing each step until it works.
It’s hardly about writing code at all… more about understanding procedure step by step.
Python is a good language to start with. Lot’s of documentation online. Popular enough that any issue you find using it 100 others have hit the same snags and posted it about it somewhere.
Back to the word problems analogy. What information is available? what information isn’t important? what can be done with the information at hand? what information is needed to proceed?
You can in theory… rough draft a program in english… then add more accurate descriptions of what needs to be done… and repeat that until you have a 1 to 1 description of the program that you are trying to write… then step by step translate it into code.
So really what I’m saying is that writing algorithms is the most important thing to focus on. How detailed they need to be before you can effectively write the programming is all a matter of experience.
I usually type out descriptions of what I’m trying to code as comments right in the source code. Usually just a few sentences to help spell it out. Then approach it like a word problem.
This is also sort of a shortcut, because those same rough draft sentences can be kept in as an element of documentation. Either as reminders for myself if I’ve forgotten what a code block does… or to help others understand and see the structure of my code.
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University for me, I looked at youtube , it helps for summaries of the topic but programming books helped me the most
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I taught myself BASIC when I was like 19.
I learned C and C++ to some extent later on, but I remember having some issues with pointers 
.
I have not coded in years though, and have no interest in straining my brain to try to relearn/refresh.
So the best way is no way , for me.
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I wouldn’t. All the big companies are dumping entry level programmers for cheaper AI tools.
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