Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Has anyone learned programming entirely from watching videos?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 20 posts

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone learned programming entirely from watching videos?

#11

Post by wayn3 »

Onixelen wrote: post #3
gridspy wrote: post #2

So, do you mean that at no point you actually write code? Best site for beginning coders : starts with a video then has a "video" of coding that you can pause and interact with. Very friendly and simple to start with. It is a good language to start with too. https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming/p...

I was implying that you write code and you practice/try things out as you're watching. Sorry should have explicitly mentioned that.

You learn by doing. If thats implied, then the medium through which baseline knowledge is delivered doesn't matter much. Pick the one that you get along with. If that's videos over books, so be it.

Ideally, you would watch videos from an intro course at stanford or MIT. Those are known for uploading such lecture series.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone learned programming entirely from watching videos?

#12

Post by gridspy »

wayn3 wrote: post #10
gridspy wrote: post #2

So, do you mean that at no point you actually write code? Best site for beginning coders : starts with a video then has a "video" of coding that you can pause and interact with. Very friendly and simple to start with. It is a good language to start with too. https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming/p...

JS is NOT a good language to start with. Its a fast way to get a job. Its an obstacle in understanding programming. Have to know what you want out of this.

js as taught on kahn is c-like and visual. It's approachable and garbage collected.

Learning languages need to be simple and friendly, not practical. Not saying that they shouldn't understand the full stack eventually.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone learned programming entirely from watching videos?

#14

Post by wayn3 »

gridspy wrote: post #12
wayn3 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JS is NOT a good language to start with. Its a fast way to get a job. Its an obstacle in understanding programming. Have to know what you want out of this.

js as taught on kahn is c-like and visual. It's approachable and garbage collected. Learning languages need to be simple and friendly, not practical. Not saying that they shouldn't understand the full stack eventually.

A first course in programming needs to teach you the principles. It doesn't need to be practical or easy or simple or any other nonsense.

If you don't understand pointers, you won't ever amount to much. Better to at least be aware that there's something important that you don't get than to be lulled into this "js everythings a mess and its ok that way" nonsense.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone learned programming entirely from watching videos?

#15

Post by snicky »

It depends what do you mean by that. I don't think you can actually learn something just by watching other people doing it, but online courses are a good start. I started to learn programming from an online Ruby on Rails course, then I created my first website (something like 9gag) and landed my first job after a couple of months. It happend to be a small company that has later created a mobile app that we managed to scale from 0 to over 100M users. I was even a main backend guy in there for some time. So yeah, watching videos might definitely be a good start, but I'd say the actual "learning" is a long process and requires lots of attention.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone learned programming entirely from watching videos?

#16

Post by newbear »

snicky wrote: post #15

It depends what do you mean by that. I don't think you can actually learn something just by watching other people doing it, but online courses are a good start. I started to learn programming from an online Ruby on Rails course, then I created my first website (something like 9gag) and landed my first job after a couple of months. It happend to be a small company that has later created a mobile app that we managed to…

How did you land this job?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone learned programming entirely from watching videos?

#17

Post by Severianx »

I have. I built a career from watching Jeffrey Way talk about php and javascript years ago. He has a video site called Laracasts now. Videos are a good way to start, but you have to love it to be good at it. Don't listen to language purists. Start with what you like.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone learned programming entirely from watching videos?

#18

Post by [deleted] »

Severianx wrote: post #17

I have. I built a career from watching Jeffrey Way talk about php and javascript years ago. He has a video site called Laracasts now. Videos are a good way to start, but you have to love it to be good at it. Don't listen to language purists. Start with what you like.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone learned programming entirely from watching videos?

#19

Post by Onixelen »

Severianx wrote: post #17

I have. I built a career from watching Jeffrey Way talk about php and javascript years ago. He has a video site called Laracasts now. Videos are a good way to start, but you have to love it to be good at it. Don't listen to language purists. Start with what you like.

> I have. I built a career from watching Jeffrey Way talk about php and javascript years ago.

This is what I need to hear.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone learned programming entirely from watching videos?

#20

Post by snicky »

newbear wrote: post #16
snicky wrote: post #15

It depends what do you mean by that. I don't think you can actually learn something just by watching other people doing it, but online courses are a good start. I started to learn programming from an online Ruby on Rails course, then I created my first website (something like 9gag) and landed my first job after a couple of months. It happend to be a small company that has later created a mobile app that we managed to…

How did you land this job?

Found them online and applied via e-mail :)
Post reply on HN