First things first. Click this:
http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/
It’s the single best introduction to coding there is.
After a few chapters if you’re still interested and haven’t started copy and pasting the code keep reading this post.
Okay, hi! You now need two things, the first is something you want to code. This can and should be your biggest desire for the future. You might never do it but start thinking about how to make something small and similar.
Ok got that? Start building it! Don’t know what to do?
Good! No one does.
The second thing to learning to program is dealing with failure. Programming is automating, once something is done it’s done, you’ll only ever deal with things that are broken, when something works your job is done. Here’s some stuff to help:
http://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming — reddit is full of helpful geeks, there are dozens of tutorials here to help you get started and the community is very knowledgeable. If you’re stuck, ask. There are no dumb questions. This is a great place to find tips on web-design. Also try
https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-mitx-6-00-1x-9— MITs introduction to programming through edx. Better than any other introduction to CS, but brutally hard. Try it! If you get to the end with a decent mark you’re a competent programmer, and should think about interning at a start up.
http://www.codecademy.com/- A gentler approach than MITs course, this is an excellent resource to test out if you like programming, and could see yourself doing it. It’s a gentler slope than Learn Python the hard way, and a lot of people have had great results with it. There’s plenty of tutorials on how to use the webs best APIs which will vastly improve any web programming you are doing.
http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book — Ruby on Rails. Period. If you’ve done Learn Python the Hard Way and the edx course, finishing this book will give you the weapons to build full web apps. At that point you are dangerous and can build a legitimate professional quality app in a weekend. I’m not overstating in this in any way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/news — Try using the search bar on Hacker News! People have been stuck many times, and there are lots of great threads from the last few years on how to learn just about everything.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read — Ok the following books could keep you reading for years, so don’t worry about reading all or even any of them. I’m linking to stack because no question is too small, and if you get stuck post it up. One of my first questions was just posting my error logs and asking what I did wrong. It wasn’t helpful or useful in anyway and was downright selfish. Loads of people helped me solve my problem anyway, its one of the most helpful places on the internet.
I’ll write more of these if anyone finds this useful, if you get stuck keep trying, then send me a message.
If you’ve read this far follow me @kingsley_kelly
