Beginners

Whenever someone new starts programming, they always ask “What language should I start with?”. Sometimes this has some variance, i.e. the person provides some choices and they want the opinions of others on which of the given they should do “first”.

Just pick any popular language and go with it. If you have someone close to you who is a mentor of some kind, and they are willing to teach you, go with that. If you are enrolling in a CS course and you know what language they are going to use, maybe use that. Do not listen to the static white noise about particular languages. Part of being a programmer is being an explorer. Pick one yourself, and get going with it. If you don’t know where to get a list of popular ones, start here: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ Make it Easy for yourself, remember the actual decision doesn’t matter. You’re going to use the language that you pick as a tool to educate you on what is actually important. It is most important to develop your own opinions. Having your own opinion means you have your own unique understanding of the tools you use.

When you have your language selected

You need a few things. You need the means to learn this language, and you need a place to ask questions. Hardly anyone gets it right the first time. programming is a pretty tough subject to get into, You can do it as well as anyone else. You just need to devote some time to it. Below I’ve illustrated a step by step process for getting to grips with your first language. Follow it, and if you have questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram(@codeszn) or Twitter(@CodeSZN_).‎

1. Get some learning material. Books work well for some people, MOOC courses work well for others. What you use should depend on YOU, you know yourself better than anyone, so you should pick what learning material you use. If you need some help picking some learning material, I found Twitter, slack, and discord channels to be useful.‎

2. Remember that resources aren’t enough. Explaining programming concepts is not an exact science, no one size fits all. That means you’ll need to ask questions. Great places to ask questions include Google, StackOverflow, Reddit, Class if you’re in class and you don’t know something, raise your hand man! Remember that googling is a skill; you’re asking the internet “what is this thing?” Be specific about what you don’t know, and it will help you.

‎3. Learn how to ask a well-structured question. Asking questions is hard. “This is broken”, “I need help”, “This doesn’t work” are not useful questions to ask. Be very specific about what is not working. If you want a good template for asking a question here, use this: What do you expect to happen when your code runs? What actually happens when your code runs? Any relevant code.

4. If you’re going to provide code, try to provide the minimum amount of code possible that still demonstrates the broken behavior. Pasting a big blob of code with no formatting will make people not want to help you. Make yourself easy to help!

‎5. Take breaks! Don’t bang your head against something for 10 hours without a break.

‎6. Be consistent. Becoming a competent programmer is not something that is going to happen overnight.

Programming is a never-ending world with countless possibilities, as a newbie it can be scary and impostor syndrome may creep in. to help with this set a goal for yourself to create a “why”, that'll spark emotions to push you to carry on.