As an systems administrator i was never overly interested in programming. In school it was always an annoyance and as a total idiot when it comes to math i thought i just stop thinking about it.
But there always was something left in my head about how cool it would be to actually create something from scratch. I always thought to be a good programmer you need to be some kind of math genius. That is totally wrong.
It's not only wrong, it's the exact opposite. You actually even are able to let your program do all math for you you want!
So due to a lot of sparetime in previous job i thought why not do something more usefull than surfing Reddit and start to teach myself some new skills.
First attempt on that i took on Harvard University's free CS50 course. It was very promising and motivating to be able to get a Harvard Certificate. It started with some basic C. The videos of the courses were very good and quite understandable.
The first 2 exams were doable with a bit of excercise. You learned to programm a drink vending machine for example, which gives you back the right amount of coins if you put to much money for a coke inside.
After a 1 month holiday break tho, i came back and tried to get into it again without any success. I think a programming language is like a spoken language, if you dont use it on a regular basis, you forget it.
Althrough i found that the step from exam 2 to exam 3 was much to far and hard. So i quitted the CS50 attempt with a few basic C knowledges still nested in my head.
Gladly a friend introduced me to
A few weeks later. I was still interested to learn programming, but on a different way. Thats where Code Academy stepped in. As the recommendation was to start off with Javascript i did exactly that.
I started the course and immediately recognized some similarities to the C language, like the basic structure, some variables and so on. I found it extremely motivating to learn on Code Academy and im still doing it. It's a nice rewarding achievement system which gives you batches and rewards for each finished course and streak.
The good thing on CA is that they take it slow. It's a nice and slow start and they explain everything properly. It gets harder throughout the course but thats fine, with a bit of practice it's fairly doable.
After nearly finishing my JavaScript course i got more and more interested in homepage developement, as i could see the results straight away.
I red some articles on Lifehacker about how to learn programming the fast way and did some of the courses they recommended and finally started to build up my own homepage.
I'm still at the very beginning but it's definitely fun to stick with it and write your own code. As you start to see results and you actually use some of your own stuff it gets exciting.
I'm still using Code Academy to learn on a daily basis. Even you just do 1 chapter in your lunchbreak, it will already improve your skills.
Below i will list a few sources which i found great for learning everything from coding programs to HTML, CSS and so on.
SelfHTML - Great source of information about everything on homepage developement
W3Schools - The equivalent to SelfHTML but it goes more deep and describes more languages, nice and clear structure of their homepage.
Learn Python the hard way - Don't be discouraged by the name of the page. It's a well documented source to learn Python, which much people recommend as your first language even before Java.
With all those resources you should have plenty to do already. The most important part is to stick with it. Learn and train on a regular basis to improve. Even just a few minutes of practice each day will improve your skills significantly.
Don't be discouraged if you cannot finish a lesson or you dont understand it. Just continue somewhere else, the understanding will for sure come on one point later.
In this sense,
Happy Coding!
But there always was something left in my head about how cool it would be to actually create something from scratch. I always thought to be a good programmer you need to be some kind of math genius. That is totally wrong.
It's not only wrong, it's the exact opposite. You actually even are able to let your program do all math for you you want!
So due to a lot of sparetime in previous job i thought why not do something more usefull than surfing Reddit and start to teach myself some new skills.
Harvard CS50
First attempt on that i took on Harvard University's free CS50 course. It was very promising and motivating to be able to get a Harvard Certificate. It started with some basic C. The videos of the courses were very good and quite understandable.
The first 2 exams were doable with a bit of excercise. You learned to programm a drink vending machine for example, which gives you back the right amount of coins if you put to much money for a coke inside.
After a 1 month holiday break tho, i came back and tried to get into it again without any success. I think a programming language is like a spoken language, if you dont use it on a regular basis, you forget it.
Althrough i found that the step from exam 2 to exam 3 was much to far and hard. So i quitted the CS50 attempt with a few basic C knowledges still nested in my head.
Gladly a friend introduced me to
Code Academy
A few weeks later. I was still interested to learn programming, but on a different way. Thats where Code Academy stepped in. As the recommendation was to start off with Javascript i did exactly that.
I started the course and immediately recognized some similarities to the C language, like the basic structure, some variables and so on. I found it extremely motivating to learn on Code Academy and im still doing it. It's a nice rewarding achievement system which gives you batches and rewards for each finished course and streak.
The good thing on CA is that they take it slow. It's a nice and slow start and they explain everything properly. It gets harder throughout the course but thats fine, with a bit of practice it's fairly doable.
After nearly finishing my JavaScript course i got more and more interested in homepage developement, as i could see the results straight away.
I red some articles on Lifehacker about how to learn programming the fast way and did some of the courses they recommended and finally started to build up my own homepage.
I'm still at the very beginning but it's definitely fun to stick with it and write your own code. As you start to see results and you actually use some of your own stuff it gets exciting.
I'm still using Code Academy to learn on a daily basis. Even you just do 1 chapter in your lunchbreak, it will already improve your skills.
Below i will list a few sources which i found great for learning everything from coding programs to HTML, CSS and so on.
SelfHTML - Great source of information about everything on homepage developement
W3Schools - The equivalent to SelfHTML but it goes more deep and describes more languages, nice and clear structure of their homepage.
Learn Python the hard way - Don't be discouraged by the name of the page. It's a well documented source to learn Python, which much people recommend as your first language even before Java.
With all those resources you should have plenty to do already. The most important part is to stick with it. Learn and train on a regular basis to improve. Even just a few minutes of practice each day will improve your skills significantly.
Don't be discouraged if you cannot finish a lesson or you dont understand it. Just continue somewhere else, the understanding will for sure come on one point later.
In this sense,
Happy Coding!
Hi there, You've done a fantastic job. I will definitely digg it and personally recommend to my friends. I'm confident they'll be benefited from this website.
AntwortenLöschenHi! Happy to hear that! It's definitely worth to try it out, as soon as you make your first steps and actually start to see some results it really gets exciting and motivates you to learn more and write more complex programs!
AntwortenLöschen