Onto Learning Programming

This is a part 2 to my previous post on getting a world class education for free In that post it was more general around getting an education and all levels. This post will focus on learning about programming and sites to explore to get learn programming.

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Introduction

When learning programming there are a variety of strategies people suggest. Some people jump right in and start looking at tutorial and use a project based approach. You learn to build or code a simple program and learn the structure of programming inherently through this process. The more tutorials you get through the more you learn implicitly. On top of that, you may have some nice programs, scripts, games or other code that could be useful to you immediately. You get your feet wet and you have something to show for it as well. From a motivation standpoint, it may be easier to partake in an actual project. You are accomplishing a task as well as learning to program. However this could also be potentially a very frustrating process. If you do not have the foundational understanding in programming, it could be hard to identify why a chunk of code is not working or how to correct it. You may not be able to ever finish the project and become frustrated with the process.

The other alternative is to take a traditional learning approach to programming. Learn about different structures and syntax of the environment. Why they are used and how they are different across languages. How to trouble shoot and correct common mistakes that arise. Learn about methods, classes and objects in programming. What they are and how to use them for different purposes. Then go over exercises for each concept and build upon each skill from previous lessons. This way could be very tedious and arduous process. It sometimes requires a steeper learning curve than most people are willing to handle. It can be equally frustrating running into errors. At the end you may have a deeper understanding of programming and the common structures but it could a lot longer to develop this as well.

Learning the Basics

These sites help you understand the underlying properties of programming without actually having to write lines and lines of code yourself. They are highly interactive and visual by design

• https://www.tynker.com/
• https://blockly-games.appspot.com/
• https://scratch.mit.edu/
• http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=what_is_alice/what_is_alice

Th sites are mostly graphical interfaces but will teach the foundations of programming. What structures are commonly used and how to put them together to make a working program. No previous experience is necessary and you don't even need to code in order to start learning. A lot is drag and drop style. This can take out a lot of the tedious syntax that bogs down first time learners. It can also make it more fun and interactive.

Next steps

After getting comfortable with the underlying concepts of programming you can start seeing some actual code through various websites as well. Some websites I mentioned last time, Khan Academy and Coursera have sections on computer programming. You can also dive into tutorials on various topics about python on Python Programming.Net. He has a pretty comprehensive set of tutorials on his website. This would be more for the project based learner. Other options would be websites geared towards coding like Data Camp and Udacity. Both websites are devoted to the discipline of Data Science in general but have all kinds of courses and lessons on various types of programming. You can even learn website design between Python Programming.net and Udacity.

Continuing On

After learning more about programming and coding, you can start your own projects. Most of the languages mentioned in the website are free and open source. This means that code is available and able to use for anyone. You can start plugging away on whatever script or project you need. If you start running into snags and can't find a solution or figure it out on your own, there is a ton of online help as well. Stack Overflow is one place that i visit frequently. You can post questions or find similar question that others posted that you are running into. All available answers to those questions are given and they are voted upon by the community to see how reliable of a solution it is. It is very helpful. Another amazing site is GitHub. You can find projects others have created that may be useful for you or you can start your own project and have others get involved. They can provide feedback on how to optimize your code or where bugs may arise and how to fix them. It truly is amazing how helpfully people are on those sites.

There you have it. That is my little post on how you can get started learning programming. I am by no means an expert but I have used or still use all of the sites I gave throughout the post. I have learned so much from the great resources on the web. I have only ever taken one formal programming course and the rest was all learned through those resources. Good luck and I hope you found this useful!