How Should I Start Programming?

Have you started learning the basics of computer science?

Have you tried learning through interactive websites?

Have you tried learning programming through video tutorials?

Before starting a course, have you got the basics of programming?

Have you tried working on a personal project?

To get the basics right, you need to learn the core of computer science, just like any other trade you will come across. There are currently hundreds of online courses aimed at beginners. Clearly, the internet cares about beginners, and provide tons of information — a beginner’s heaven! A proper understanding can give you an advantage early in the path of learning to code.

Websites like Codecademy and Freecodecamp are recommended for interactive coding sessions. These were built with the idea that many beginners are stuck at the beginning when they start to learn to code while setting up the development environment. These websites offer online text editors and compilers to begin coding instantly.

If you are a person who likes a detailed study with step by step guidance then it is recommended to enroll in any online programming tutorial that teaches you from the beginning to install and download the required IDE to basic concepts of the language and it ends with a capstone project to test your coding skills. Some tutorials and courses also offer certifications that could help you later when you look for the job. Pluralsight and Lynda are recommended for beginners for viewing tutorials for the preferred language. You may also want to check out some top-rated tutorials at Hackr-io.

It is always suggested to make your fundamentals strong so as to be a pro coder. Stress on data types, variables, functions, array or Lists, if statements, conditional loops, classes and objects exception handling, trees, maps, and more to begin learning as they are common in almost all the languages.

Building your personal project is the best way to analyze and learn what you have learned. Building a project of your choice would give you practical learning experience of the language in much detail as you would come across the implementation of the concepts that you have learned earlier and also learn how to deploy the project to be used by you and all others. Moreover, as you build your projects add it to your profile or your GitHub account, this would help you in the future when you look for a job in development.

Most of all, before starting to learn any language, you have to choose why do you want to learn programming and what specific task do you want to accomplish as each language is built for a specific group of tasks.