Getting started with Programming for beginners - gathering the resources.
Hello everyone, I hope you're doing well. It's been an interesting journey on Steem for me so far and I've learnt a lot from the community - especially on the technical front. It's been amazing to see so many people answering my queries without any hesitation. I have been honored to have known such people and have learnt immensely from them. So, starting today, I'll be writing tutorials for programming-beginners and will try to help them as much as I can. A discussion can be started in the comments anyway. I believe it will be an amazing experience for me, as well as for the new programmers.
Where are my resources?
Today, we will only look at the resources we will need for the rest of the journey. We will talk about the websites you will need to register yourself to and how they are going to play an integral role in your journey of becoming a better and efficient programmer. So, buckle up!
Resource #1 : Stackoverflow
Sign up at stackoverflow right away. Even if you don't sign up, you'll be using this website the most. You can almost do away with the rest of the list but not this one. One way or the other, you will definitely end up seeing it if you're into programming. So, go make an account.
But Why?
When you get stuck somewhere because you don't know how to proceed or because you got an error and you want to fix it, or when you feel a certain command is supposed to work the way you think it should but it isn't working that way, you need to realize that someone else in the world might have already faced that problem in their journey of becoming a programmer. Stackoverflow is a forum where programmers exchange questions and answers.
- If you get stuck, you look for answers at stack overflow.
- If you don't find the answer you're looking for, you ask one.
- If you find the answer, you implement it and try it. If it works, great. If it doesn't, repeat from the first step again.
Resource #2 : Github
This is where programmers hangout. You will be using this tool more often than you think of. It's the warehouse of almost all open-source projects available online. If you don't know what open source is, go google. You will need this because you're not going to share screenshots of your code but you'll be making gists of your code and sharing it with others. You get to follow programmers working in the area of your interest and interact with them here and perhaps even contribute to an open source project.
Fun fact : Entire Steem project source code, basically the code that is making it possible for Steemit to run the way it is running, is all put up on Github and anyone can view it and contribute to it. Go sign yourself up at github.com.
Resource #3: Tutorials Point
You're not going to memorize the syntax all the time. Sometimes, you'll forget the syntax, sometimes you just need to read about a concept to move to the next concept quickly and that's when TutorialsPoint comes in. It has a single page description on all the major concepts of computer science with a working code. Use tutorialspoint.com as a reference.
Tool #1 : Text Editor
Everyone has their preference depending on ease of use, learning curve and efficiency for picking a text editor. Text Editors are softwares or programs that we use to write code. We open text editors, create a new file and write our code in it. I mostly use SublimeText but you can use atom as it is completely free and open source - meaning, it was built by people like you or me with good technical skill.
Download atom for windows
Download atom for Debian/Ubuntu
Download atom for mac
Tool #2: Programming Language Compiler/Interpreter
It depends on the language you'd want to implement to write your program. For this series, we'll use Python. Therefore, we've install and set up python in our systems.
Download the relevant version of python from here as per your operating system. You can download 2.7 for sometime until we decide to move to 3.6 later.
Book
[The online version of this book is free for reading]
Someone put it up on github.
Starting today, we'll move ahead in the book by writing one program per post, following the book and covering the basic concepts.
So, your task for today is :
- Install Atom
- Install Python
- Register at Stack Overflow
- Register at Github
#Day1
-isteemit
A very big thank for the good work you are doing here. I will like to learn web designing ,html and Css. Can we see future posts on these topics?
I'll probably get on it after I complete this series. Thank you :D
This is exactly what I needed. Thx.
Glad that you're finding it useful. Thank you :D
i love how you explain this. but i think for beginners its too hard to use phython for the first programming language. for beginners. i prefer pascal. because it has similarities with the english language. so users just have to implement their logic. for phython , i think it better used for intermediet-advanced user
but. that just my preferences. don't judge ^^
You might be right but I personally have never written pascal. I am not a Python expert either but I just wanted to pick a high level language that would be easily readable. Also, the book I'll be following, is very basic. It should be helpful for absolute beginners.
nice postnya .........
posting is perfect, I like posting like this.
You can also add Sublime Text in Tool Section as it is also widely used :)
Had thought of it but Sublime isn't free and requires purchasing of license. I'll put it up with a notice.
Thanks :)
Not really, you can use it without purchasing the license.
Stack overflow is good but most of the time the solutions didn't work in my case. My role is Weblogic Admin, when ever I try to find out what the error, checking the logs I end up getting absurd solutions. But still it was helpful sometimes.
It will be quite helpful in the long run. If the solution provided for your question doesn't work, you can continue posting in the thread and mention that the provided solution didn't work for you.
Thanks for telling about all in one post i will try to learn more about it :)
If you don't have any experience in programming but want to give it a shot, jump in - it's an exciting time.
good,
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Thanks for the useful learning framework/approach you are suggesting. Two questions, please: (1) Do you have in mind any specific output that a successful student would produce at the end of following your series faithfully? (2) I prefer to focus on Javascript as my next language to learn (I’ve learned and used about 10 by now in my prof. work; but neither Javascript nor Python). Would it make sense to to read along in the Python book you suggest while actually trying to implement the ideas in Javascript? Thanks in advance.
Hi, this course is intended for absolute beginners so a successful student would be able to read and understand python codes and write python programs on their own.
For 2, you could try writing codes in multiple platforms as you learn along. But this book might not help you directly build projects. It will help you learn programming and that's about it. For Javascript, you'll probably need to learn ES6/ES7 and then hop on a framework of your choice and learn that.
Thanks for your guidance.