How to start learning programming?

In the head of almost any person, starting from 2018-2019, thoughts appear about changing their profession to something around IT. These thoughts immediately break on the rocks of several big myths.

  • The market is crowded with specialists and it is simply impossible to break through the huge competition. I also had such thoughts when I already found my first job. It really pissed me off until I saw how many people are afraid of the difficulties associated with learning. A LOT of newbies drop out of courses or their personal training for many reasons. I communicate with people from this area and I can confidently say that the quote “We can’t find a good developer” is very often heard. Considering that for the last 3 years advertising courses have been heard from every iron, there should not be a need for specialists at all, but there is) Also, an argument against the myth of market glut is that the sphere itself is developing very quickly, new companies appear, workers appear places.

  • Learning a profession in IT is very difficult. You can say yes and no to that. Courses that say “JOB GUARANTEE AFTER HALF-YEAR OF COURSES” are lying, no one will look for you a job) The bottom line is that learning any new profession that you were not previously familiar with will be difficult, but only at first. There is really a lot of information that you will need to learn, but with each month of learning it will become easier and easier. And when you find the first job with a good team leader who will point out mistakes right in the project, you will get a boost in learning speed that is hard to realize.

  • Someone is already ahead and I can’t catch up with him. I am not a psychologist, but it seems to me that this corral appears in all people in a variety of life situations. Personally, I had such thoughts during my studies at the university. The guys with macbooks and in suits, who for some reason wrote code while sitting in the dining room and during breaks between classes, told that they had a new PROJECT, or talked about simple things in a complex language, made me think that I was 10 steps behind. But In fact, all this backlog was only in my head. Here I can only advise you to read a few parables about a tortoise and a hare, not to pay attention to this and calmly study at the pace at which you are more comfortable.

  • It’s very funny, but almost all the people who wanted to start doing something in programming during my time think that for training, you need a powerful PC, knowledge of Linux, or you generally need to buy a poppy. This is absolutely not true! For training and even for some personal projects, an old laptop on Windows is enough. The main thing is that it does not lag to such a state that it is simply impossible to use it.

  • Working as a developer for very smart guys. It’s a lie, I’m a triple student, I almost flew out after the 9th grade to a technical school, I entered Baumanka on a scarf, I never scored to study, but I didn’t have enough stars from the sky. I wrote off a lot. Everything I know, I got not from couples, but from Google. I am not proud of all this at all, but this is direct proof that even not the most “Smart” boy can learn something, the main thing is to be diligent and not give up on development. There can be a huge number of these misconceptions in the head, so it is impossible to describe them all, but it seems to me that these are the most popular. If you are determined to learn something, move on to the main topic of this article. How to start learning programming?

  1. What is development? For people who have no idea what a programmer does at work, I will try to explain in simple terms. There is a project, for example some website. Let there be VK. VK has a group of people who understand what new functionality users want to see. They noticed that many people do not like listening to voice messages. It was decided to add the ability to recognize speech so that the user presses the button and sees the text of the voice message. Further, this idea is signed in detail on paper: how and what should work. After that, designers come into play. These are the guys who, according to the description of the feature, draw how it will look on the site. And at the next stage, the developers begin their work. They have the most common folder on their work laptops, which contains a lot of text files. These text files contain code in different programming languages. The task of the developer is to add such code in the right places so that everything looks and works according to the designs and description of the feature. If everything works, then the work of programmers is checked by testers, and if everything is fine, they are sent to the user.

  2. How to choose a programming language for learning? When a person starts to google something about learning to program, the head is spinning from a huge number of different languages. You can talk about this topic for a very long time, but the essence of the videos and articles comes down to the fact that people defend the language in which they write. They look for pluses in it, know how to get around its minuses, or simply turn a blind eye to them. Nevertheless, there are several criteria by which you can make a + – an objective choice.

    1. Language popularity (Article on the topic). This is important because a popular language has a larger community, more learning materials.

    2. Number of vacancies (Related article). Everything is clear here. More vacancies – more work.

    3. Average developer salary (Article on the topic). This should not be the most important item among the three listed, maybe. salaries are highly dependent on the company. But for the general idea it is worth knowing this.

    When I looked at these graphs 4 years ago, the first thing I noticed was JavaScript, and I didn’t regret my choice. In any case, it is important to understand that when one programming language is learned, the second one is much easier to learn.

  3. Where to start studying? Further I will talk about everything using the example of JavaScript, simply for the reason that I went this way. This question, like the others, has already been answered. There are so-called road maps. Googling for “JS roadmap” you can look at them a lot, but they have something in common. These are big blocks of JavaScript, HTML, CSS. These 3 things are essential to know. We will talk more about each of these three languages ​​in the future, but if you want to start somewhere, you can open YouTube and type in the lessons for each language in the order in which they are written above. I also found out about such a cool thing as a programmer competence matrix (A good example of a matrix that I sometimes refer to). It’s not worth worrying too much about the fact that you don’t understand something from these topics, since different positions require different knowledge, but by looking at it you can roughly understand the area of ​​​​knowledge that is worth pulling up.

  4. Where can I find study materials? I am a big opponent of courses because a person mentally throws the responsibility for his training on someone else and relaxes. But if you think that this will be an additional incentive and you can’t do without courses, it’s important to understand that you still can’t do 100% with courses alone. So here are my top sites for learners.

    1. The MOST important thing that a programmer should be able to do is correctly formulate a question in Google. In work, you have to go to Google almost every day; during training, you need to google all day.

    2. youtube.com – The main friend of a person who has just started training. You type in “JavaScript lessons” for example, and you come across a couple of playlists with names like “JavaScript from scratch”. Find someone who explains better and watch it. If you don’t understand something in the explanation, formulate a query on Google and search until you can explain in your own words. This is the ideal option.

    3. habr.com, medium.com and other sites with articles – You will most likely come across sites with articles. Sometimes they will be in English, this is normal, it doesn’t build to be scared. Translate in a translator, do everything as it is written there, and everything will work. If it doesn’t work, formulate a question and write in the Google search bar.

    4. www.stackoverflow.com – This is the best source of information when an unfamiliar error comes across. Just paste the text of the error into the Google search box, with a 99% probability this site will be in the first links. Mostly they write in English, but the translator will help you figure out what’s what.

    5. learn.javascript.ru – A wonderful JS tutorial that covers all the syntax. At the end of each lesson there is a task and a solution to it with an explanation.

Let’s summarize. In order to start learning any programming language, you need:

  1. Highlight the first steps by studying several roadmaps of the language you have chosen.

  2. On selected topics, search for training videos on YouTube, articles on the Internet, electronic textbooks or courses.

  3. I would advise you not to study the syntax for a long time on small tasks and set yourself the goal of making a standard “To-Do List”. A common application that can create, display, modify and delete text notes. Such applications are called CRUD applications (Create Read Update Delete) and very often they are given as a test task for the position of a junior. In the process of creating it, you will learn the syntax of the language, encounter a bunch of problems and look for their solution in Google. Nobody bothers to look for guides on YouTube “How to make a to-do list in JavaScript” for example. Do everything as in the video, gain experience. Further, it will be possible to attach a database to this application, write a server for it, and, if you want to get tired, deploy it on the Internet so that someone can go there via a link.

  4. If during the learning process in an article or a training video you notice an unfamiliar character or word in the code (this will happen very often), it is better to pause, google this word and figure out what it means, where it is used and why.

In conclusion, I would like to say that by making an effort, doing 2-3 hours a day for half a year, you will be able to reach a level with which you can go to interviews. Finding your first job is the hardest part, but that’s a topic for another article.

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