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Francesca Demarinis
1,269 PointsPlease help!
Hey, I'm struggling with not knowing what to do or where to start. I know I want a career in programming but I don't know what the most important thing to learn first is. I would like to find a job a soon as I can but I feel like I may (not necessarily) be wasting my time doing lessons that may not be as relevant right now. Don't get me wrong I do plan on furthering my coding skills as much as possible but I want to get the important things done first so that i can start looking for a career. I have A.S.D. (autism spectrum disorder) so coding is right up my alley but with all the different lessons and languages I'm just confused on where to start. Any help is appreciated, Thank you.
Also I'm sorry, I'm sure this questions comes up a lot.
1 Answer
michael lynch
9,560 PointsHi Francesca,
I would say don't worry about what language to learn, the truth is that when you learn the concepts and methodologies of programming you can apply these to almost all languages. This is a broad generalisation but its a good way to look at it just now. For example Object Orientated Programming(OOP) is something that almost all modern languages are based around, From java to C# and ruby. In OOP you have concepts such as Encapsulation, polymorphism and so on. By learning these you can apply it to your language. The question will come up do you want to do Front-end or back-end or maybe even both, i would say you cannot answer this until you start writing code, once you pick a language and start working on a project, you will find that naturally you will need to use other things to get the project to work which exposes you to other languages of technologies you will then start to find what you like and don't like. I would start off by using Java to learn the concepts i've mentioned or C# and maybe along side this look at HTML and CSS, html and css are not programming languages as such but more a mark up language. Why when these languages are pretty different? Html and css are easy to pick up, and you see instant results in the browser, that will be gratifying to see and help you to keep going, java and C# are more complex, but it will teach you everything you need for a good base. After doing that you now have something to compare with other languages such as Javascript (the mean stack is great) and then would understand the simplicity of Ruby (rails). This is all a broad generalisation and maybe for someone that wants a in depth knowledge, on the other hand the best thing to do is just start, just start coding, it sounds so simple but its the only way you learn regardless of what you pick, procrastination is detrimental to your success.
Its a long journey, but when you get there its great. It all starts with a single line of code or a "hello world".
All the best Mike