If you don’t know the difference between PHP and JavaScript, or hosting and a domain, you’ve come to the right place. Although the industry has slowed down a bit due to the pandemic, programmers are still in demand.
In the past, not many people were interested in learning programming – the sad stereotype depicted IT specialists as people wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses and a flannel shirt sticking out of their pants that were pulled up too high. Today, even the most hardcore of manual labor enthusiasts should realize that programming is the future. If you want to learn this art, but don’t know where to start, then sit back and read the article below. In it, you will find explanations of basic concepts and a few hints on how to bite into this unique topic
Before you start learning a particular programming language, you should know that there are very, very many of them. Each of them has its own specialization – some are perfect for programming robots, while others enable web applications. For the past few years, JavaScript and HTML/CSS have been the most widely used languages, but no wonder – they are responsible for the operation of most websites on the web. Third on the list, SQL is used to organize databases and is often used for projects where another language is the main one. Python – although in fourth position – climbs higher and higher in the ranking every year, surpassing Java in 2019. Summaries like this are helpful in getting a sense of what technologies are most commonly used, and thus how large the knowledge base behind them is
Even if you are extremely versatile, you will only have to choose one language to start learning at the very beginning. Java focuses on applications, desktop and web programs, PHP is mostly web – stores and sites, Python – applications, software, artificial intelligence and almost everything else. C# is also a general purpose language, C++ is system programming, applications and machines, JavaScript is web display, Pearl is text file processing, system administration and web applications. This is just a fraction of the list of all programming languages, to be described extremely briefly – with a little self-indulgence, almost every one of them can be used to code completely different things
Anyone starting to learn to code quickly finds that the variety of teaching materials is overwhelming. You can scour hundreds of online forums, pile through stacks of books, and read the code of open-source applications, but there’s also a simpler way. YouTube videos can be a good start. They may not provide you with specialized and expert knowledge, but they can present the language in an interesting way, show its possibilities and applications. You will also see how the code looks like, what characterizes it and how complicated it is. Once you know the basics, it is good to move to one of the platforms with online courses. In some services you will find really good training even for free, but then you can rarely count on the instructor or community to help you solve more difficult tasks. You often have to pay extra for access to social media platforms and contact with the teacher, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be big money. The key here is to be patient and read reviews of the course. Before you start, it is a good idea to ask yourself, do you want to learn alone or in a group? Do you need feedback from the instructor, or do you prefer to work on your solutions without the instructor’s help? Of course, not everyone is necessarily a fan of interactive learning and prefers to use classic methods such as solving exercises contained in thick volumes spread out in front of a computer. There’s nothing wrong with that – the most important thing is that your method is comfortable for you.
Coding may sound a little scary at first, but it’s actually a pretty harmless process. Most popular programming languages have dozens of “text editors” that you can write in, but there are also environments that allow you to write software in multiple languages. IDEs are what are called Integrated Development Environments, which are programs used to create, test, and modify software. They also allow you to compile the source code, i.e. translate the language in which you are writing into the language understood by the computer. Modern IDEs suggest the piece of code you should write at a given time, fill in gaps, and show errors with graphical hints. As a beginner, look for an editor that is transparent and offers the best tools to help you learn programming.
