Where to Learn a Programming Language?
In the world of too much information, it has become difficult to learn effectively despite having a huge quantity of knowledge which the majority of it is free.
Back in the day, before I figured out the best site to learn whatever I wanted to learn if it was a language, framework, a library, etc. I always asked myself, where is the best site or which is the best book, tutorial, or whatever that I could learn the most valuable information about that particular thing because I was so afraid of the pain of having to learn something more than once due to the lack of vital information (that is still my weakness till this day)
Since I had no intentions of buying a book or a paid course I always wondered which site(s) could be the best for me to learn so that I would no longer have to learn it again(it will be just the matter of going back to the same site and read again when I seem to forget)
I hope a lot of programmers can relate to this.
This Article is not sponsored by any of the sites that I may recommend, all the views have been gathered from my experience on teaching myself code
Before I can tell you what is that specific place or site to learn about a programming language, its important to discuss the following
Who do you want to be taught with?
A lot of newbies in the field, Learn coding through youtube videos, this is where more than 90% of self-taught developers began with including me
Youtube is a great platform to learn code but there is a lot of invaluable information out there, Most Youtubers are not experts on the field, to be honest, especially solo Youtubers with channels that are not specialized in a certain subject or a certain language, I spoke about specialization in my previous article
It is rare to see an expert in multiple fields, Specialization is the key to mastery
You always want to be taught with experts right?, If you decide to use Youtube as your learning platform I would recommend you to learn from the experts on a particular subject that you want to understand
Cheap knowledge is taken for granted
It is human nature that, we do not take serious things that we did not pay a price to get, It is cheap knowledge that is always taken with less enthusiasm and can be easily forgotten
Also, I believe you know that deep and valuable information on certain subjects is not easily found for free
On this basis, I do now prefer paid courses to free courses not to mention that it takes an expert to make them and get approved for their quality on some of the platforms that allow selling courses like Udemy
Stay Up to Date
you have heard them say, “This industry changes extremely fast”
That is so true, something that you learned on this career the past month is not the same today as it were the last time you learned it
That is where all coding books fall-flat
if you decide that you want to learn a certain language, tool, framework, or something it is wise to look at the date when it was published to make sure no long time has passed
It is also wise to go on the official documentation of whatever you are trying to learn and look at the version of the language they are at so that you can know how much you will be willing to miss when you decide to learn from an obsolete book
Final Thoughts
There are many great sites to learn about a programming language that I have even learned myself, they are too many to mention, But the number one site that I recommend is the official documentation of that particular language due to the following reasons;
- Teachers are experts if not founders
- Free but Valuable
- Always up to date
there you have it but still, there is a problem of too much information on the docs, that is why I always say that we should learn while building a project so that one can know what is necessary, and what can be used in a rare situation or never to be used, it is also important that you know how to learn code as the majority of us don’t know the best way to learn that suits them, I have talked about this on my recent episode on Patreon, check it out if you are curious to know
Hey guys I have a new publication betterprogrammerz.com that focuses on content like this to help you become a better programmer, stay subscribed to it if you want more of these also, don’t forget to follow me for more articles like this
