Programming is arguably the best skill you can learn in these modern times, whether for career prospects, to change the world, make it a better place, or to stretch your brain and create something awesome. If you're just getting started on your coding journey, here are seven tips and resources to set you off on the right foot.
The direction you go in will depend in large part on why you want to learn to code in the first place and how much time you have to devote to learning. If you want to be a professional programmer, signing up college courses might be your best bet. (Google has a list of suggested skills and courses for would-be software engineers.) If you want to build websites or games for fun (and possibly profit) in your spare time, interactive tutorials might be better. Bloc has a comparison of course options based on workload, cost, and reason you're picking up programming. And if you're still deciding on a tech career, Switch will recommend one based on your interests.
There's nothing like "best" programming language, and once you've learned one, it's fairly easy to pick up another, so don't get hung too up on choosing your first language. That said, some languages are more beginner-friendly than others. The language you choose to start with might depend, again, on your purpose. (For example, if you want to write an iOS app, you'll need to learn Swift.) There's a case for starting with C if you're serious about programming, although higher-level languages, like Python, are easier to jump into right away.
No matter the language or learning method you choose, you should start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). Start with the basics and be patient with yourself as you progress. To take your first coding project from start to finish, break down the project into simple steps. And if one method of learning isn't working for you (e.g., books), try another method.
Free online training sites like CODEACADEMY can help you write your first computer program. Tutorials from KhanAcademy, Codecademy, Code.org, and many other organizations will introduce you to the basics of programming—all while creating a new game, site, or other project. Find the resources you need according to the language you're learning. These are good starting points, but you'll need to take the initiative to further or continue your learning after these introductions.
When you get stuck on a problem or just need to look something up, reference books come in very handy. There's a huge collection of free programming books posted on GitHub, and collections of E-books covering all programming languages.
The best form of learning will always remain teaching. The more you explain a concept or an idea to someone, the better you begin to understand it. No knowledge is too small to teach.The programming community is full of people who are willing to help the next generation of programmers. Even just planning to teach what you've learned can help you retain the information better.
When you reverse engineer someone else's code, testing each line to see how it works, you get a better understanding of the big picture. Thanks to tons of open source code, you can learn just about anything.
