Learning to Code: Where to Start

A practical guide to getting started with coding

Photo by Ellen Melin on Unsplash

So you want to learn to code. Fantastic! You’ve heard chatter about bootcamps, read about how much developers earn, and seen tech startups valued at a billion dollars. Everyone’s talking about how coding is the future, and you’re thinking about checking it out for yourself — maybe even considering a career change.

Now what?

In this article, I’ll cover thinking about why you want to learn to code, what coding is, what you should learn about depending on your aims, the different routes you can take, and the different types of resources available to you, to help you find your footing in the coding world.

As a software engineer, it’s a question I hear a lot: “I’m thinking about learning to code — where do I start?”. My response is always, “Why do you want to learn to code?”.

Coding is a lot like writing. You don’t just write, you write something. You write a story, you write an article, you write a tweet. Each is a different form of writing, each with a different purpose, and each with a slightly different set of techniques. Similarly, coding’s not an isolated skill: it completely depends on what you want to use it for. There are different types of languages, each used for a different purpose. Styling a webpage…