I have been learning by myself for the past year, and if I may, let me share a few thoughts gathered along the way:<p>- This will never be “2 months, and I'll build next Facebook”. Consider that this is a field of knowledge that is exponentially evolving every year, and you will need years before you are comfortable with it. Learning code or computer science is a long term decision, and you should go for it if you really see yourself doing it as a hobby. If you are not up for it, better learn web design or something that relies less on programming;<p>- Following my previous point, start by learning the basics of computer science. You will not understand the abstract concepts, or know what you are doing before you have the theory basis behind it – You will get unmotivated faster. How fun is it to play a guitar without knowing music theory? There are dozens of ways to learn CS, and I personally find the CS50x class from EdX the best source to start;<p>- If you don't like math, well.. start liking it! Part of the enjoyment of programming is the satisfaction you get from solving problems. Read books about algorithms and/or take the online classes in Coursera or Udacity. Also make Project Euler as a daily visit, and try to solve several challenges per week;<p>- Again, start small, and go small every step. Make a structured plan of what you want to learn, such as "Monday I study Python, Tuesday for Algorithms, Wednesday for CS..". Take advantage of dozens of courses available in Coursera, Udacidy and EdX.<p>- Part of learning anything is making yourself motivated along the way. You should study at least 10h per week (I work full-time and I never study less than that) and make your successes visible, such as placing a post-it with every online course you completed in a wall;<p>Btw, I studied Economics for 5 years and I am 24. Even if you are older, never fall in the excuse that you are too old or it's too late. That's your "I am afraid to fail" thoughts. You don't have any pressure, no one is asking you to develop a whole new Microsoft.
It is sad that after 20 years of MVC and the 10 years of it on the Web, we are still telling people that to start coding they need to start with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. And I agree with you, this is the place to start today. Yet it is pathetic, that is unless we want to keep the coding just to ourselves, like the doctors do with their field. I recently listened to a presentation on Grails. Honestly wanted to grok it fast. Mind you, I have been a Java developer since it first came out around 1996. No disrespect to the framework itself, but all those extra concepts you need to shove into your head before you even begin to code, this is atrocious.<p>Out of this resentment I and a couple friends set out to build an MVC system where newbies start with the models (backbone.js) by creating them on a smartphone using only their browser. And once you are done, the app goes live. See it at <a href="http://urbien.com" rel="nofollow">http://urbien.com</a> and its open sourced client at <a href="http://github.com/urbien/urbini" rel="nofollow">http://github.com/urbien/urbini</a><p>Laying out the main concepts of your future app, and connecting them is not easy for noobs. Hack, even for developers sometimes it is a bit of a puzzle. You need to scratch your head a couple of times when you make the domain model for a new app. But at least this is all you need to do to get the app running with our system.<p>Afterwards you can start tinkering and tweaking, by changing themes, images, modifying the underlying templates (HTML) in-place, and connecting apps IFTTT-style, with a tiny plug script.<p>Would you like to review and may be even help us make the design friendly to geeks-who-can't-code?
I find all of these learn to code posts very interesting. I would consider myself to be a beginner coder even though over the years I have spent time learning or trying to learn C++, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Node.js, jQuery, Objective-C, Python, Ruby and others. For each language I had a different reason for wanting to learn, generally it amounted to wanting to build something and trying my best to learn the pieces necessary to start.<p>The key thing that ties all of my different attempts to learn together, and why I still consider myself to be a beginner is that I always stopped short of achieving my goal. Generally this was due to hitting some sort of blockage that I couldn't figure out how to get past, or generally getting bored with the slow learning process.<p>Both of these recent articles have really resonated with me, as I have personally struggled with Codecademy (currently 66% done code year), and I regularly bite off more than I can chew. I like the suggestion of finding a mentor and putting my head down, as well as focusing on small projects that build off of each other.<p>In the end, I really want to learn how to code, but so far I haven't found a method that sticks. Maybe that says I don't really want it, but to me it says there isn't a great learning method out there for me yet. So while Codecademy is great and all, I really think there is still a hole in the market. Figuring out how to fill it is the key.
I don't get it. What do people mean nowdays when they talk about being a "coder"?<p>It seems everybody want's to build stuff before understanding the fundamentals of computing. I don't see how jumping right away to trying to build stuff for the web can make it easier for someone to learn to program. No talk about algorithms, datastructures, and so on.<p>I'm not dimissing this approach, I just feel like it is not the most productive in the long run. It may lead to the development of bad habits, cargo cult, and stuff like that, derived from misunderstandings of how computing works.<p>EDIT: as an example.. i had a friend that learned to program the way you suggested, though he lacked knowledge of basic stuff like recursion, ordering and search algorithms, and so on. He sure could get things done, but not rarely the approach used had extremely bad performance or did things like modifying data shared between threads in an unsafe maner.
Totally agree with your point. I tell almost everyone trying to learn programming to start off with Udacity CS101 with Python. I myself started with HTML/CSS a long time ago. It is not programming per say but the satisfaction of having created a simple web page is satisfying. Learning Ruby on Rails from the beginning will be too much to handle at one go without even knowing the basics of HTML/CSS/JS and not even to mention the basics of database design. It will take a long time, but it will be worth it as knowledge and experience is accumulated. Start Small, Have Fun - good advice.
Don't bite off more than you can chew. Goes for a lot of things. I used to write lots of short stories, then I started working on a longer, novella length piece. After ten chapters or so I got sick of it, but didn't want to start anything else with that unfinished. Pretty much stopped writing after that.
I like the comparison to sports. And, CSS/HTML and then Javascript etc, learning the fundamentals of those - is what EVERY Developer should have (or currently do). So, I'm with you on that one.