Thread: Looking to learn computer programming, best way to start?

Welcome!

There's two groups of people on this forum:
1) Those that agree that being a programmer helps in the fastlane (myself)
2) Those that disagree and believe you should hire others to do the work and focus on the business itself.

To become a programmer at the level I am today, I started by reading two books a week on the subject, then a book a week, and now I still read one about once a month. It's a longgg haul to becoming a professional at it, but I feel it is entirely worth it.

People try and learn from the internet all the time and I honestly think that's a joke. I've never met a proficient programmer who learned solely online. The great thing about books is that they are extremely cheap, contain massive amounts of information, and are usually written by THE expert in what you are trying to learn. If you're gonna do it... look up author's, read reviews, and get the books.

Good luck!

I'm not a programmer myself, but I've seen many programmers respond to this exact question..

One guy from this site recommended thenewboston.org - I checked it out, it's pretty cool!

Safari books offers a subscription for the O'Reilly books. I've heard great stuff about them and I've checked them out myself. Easy enough to understand for a beginner, IMO.

Your local library is probably the cheapest resource. Some places are packed with great programming books.

Lynda.com offers free and paid tutorials for programming and software.

That's all I got off the top of my head.

Good luck!

Learning from free online resources is okay, but like others have mentioned it's better to learn in a structured format first. Get the principles and base knowledge down before you go for random tutorials that are all over the place. Like most said actual books, lynda, etc.

Depends: do you want to program your own application, or do you actually want to become a proficient programmer?

MJ made his Limos.com Web site and the proprietary application behind it by figuring out what he wanted, then learning how to build it step by step, like a house.

Most programmers learn by getting a full-on education, whether it's going to school or picking up dozens of large heavy books and running through the material in them.

As dknise said, there are two main camps on the forum: those who think it would be helpful to program your own application and those who would rather outsource that part and focus on the business aspect.

I find myself more in the second camp, mostly because there are so many Internet-based businesses you can pursue without knowing a damn thing about computer programming. You don't need to know how to program in order to sell your own products.

I don't really have any advice for you on which path you should take. Just do what you feel is best for your career moving forward.

a lot of good points here. I would also like to add a few points. Firstly, I don't consider myself a professional programmer but have been actively learning it for little over a year now.

* first figure out why you want to learn programming and what your long-term intentions are
* web development/programming today is A LOT more complex than it was say a decade ago. even if you go back to school for 2 years or whatever, that will not guarantee that you will be a solid, proficient programmer. a lot of the courses at schools mostly teach the theories. the common/appropriate practices and knowledge of real world applications happens well...mostly outside of the acadamia.
* how quickly you pick up programming will depend on the time you put towards learning and available resources
* being a good programmer is not just learning the code itself. its about knowing the good practices, how to tie in business logic with your application, constructing properly so it's modular and so everything doesn't fall apart in the future, etc. Its combining the basic theory that you learn then combining all the personal experiences & learning from your mistakes (from testing/debugging), work experience, and good practices.
* utilize books then compliment your learning via google, online references, tutorials, forums, asking other professional programmers
* find a mentor

Side note:
- learning programming gets you in a diff way of thinking & perspective which also becomes applicable to other areas of life and business
- you will soon realize becoming a good programmer at this day an age is very difficult. In fact, just being a programmer doesn't really cut it these days. It's better to understand how everything is connected together utilizing whatever programming language, and then some.
To get to a level the pro's are at now will require a very long amount of time. I'm talking years and tons of trial and error. This still shouldn't deter you from learning as i mentioned it is also applicable to other areas.
- if you have the funds/capital, screw learning and just outsource it. focus on selling. though having some basic knowledge of programming to be able to efficiently communicate with programmers wouldn't hurt.

This thread again?

You can pick up the basics from online courses like:

Codeacademy (free)
Team Treehouse (paid)

See the other thread. Programming is stupid. A ton of back and forth there and why.

I'm in a similar situation and have been learning both from some books I picked up on Amazon (paid no more than $20 for a single one) and some tutorials online. I'd recommend:

Learn to code | Codecademy
TheNewBoston - Free Educational Video Tutorials on Computer Programming, Adobe Software, Computer Science and More!
How To Start Programming