Best Resources to Learn Coding. Part I: Top-Down Approach
Today coding is one of the most important skills, and it is gaining more popularity. The demand for coders is increasing every year. I guess coding is going to become an essential part of one’s life for future generations. But at the moment, not everyone has skills like that. There are a lot of people who want to learn but don’t know where to start. There are two main approaches to learning coding: Top-Down and Bottom-Up. What is the difference between them?
Bottom-Up approach presupposes learning from low-level concepts and basic things to high-level tasks. Top-Down approach is opposed to it. This approach presupposes completing high-level tasks from the very beginning, it doesn’t give solid knowledge of coding, but it teaches how to solve specific problems right here and right now: for example, how to build an app without a long learning curve. It means that every time you face a new task and every time you learn new tools and ways of solving a problem.
In this post, we are going to talk about some awesome resources for learning coding according to Top-Down approach.
- Derek Banas. It is a YouTube channel for those who want to learn coding quickly. It is engaging and gives a lot of information on how to build mobile apps, stylesheets, and many other things. The videos are short but informative.
- CodeGym Java Tutorial. It is a course based on practice for entry-level students. It offers a great variety of coding tasks. They are all based on real scenarios. The main advantage of this course is that you’ll practice solving real problems.
- Towards Data Science. It is an online community for data science experts where they can share their experiences and case studies. This is a great resource where you can find answers to your questions.
- Elite Data Science. Though this resource is for Top-Down learning, it supports the idea that students should be acquainted with the whole picture and have more advanced coding skills. Elite Data Science offers using cheat sheets and tables for references instead of working with long tutorials.
- David Walsh is an expert in coding. He shares his experience and gives great tips.
I suppose Top-Down approach is what technical writers can use in their work. They don’t have to learn everything in detail, they need comprehensive information about a particular topic, problem, or scenario to create efficient technical documentation. I hope the above-mentioned resources will help you. Besides, you can check out some books on coding — Best HTML and CSS Books for Beginners.
