Personally, I learn better by doing. There are some great free courses available over at https://tutsplus.com that are quite good. I also found the http://onemonthrails.com pretty good for beginners. However, that one is a paid course, but it's pretty cheap
What to tell noobs who want to "learn coding"?
41–50 of 53 posts
Re: What to tell noobs who want to "learn coding"?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this completely, and I'll make a specific claim: eloquentjavascript.net is the best book to use. ---it's an online book that lets you run code right in the book ---it's the language of the REPL that everyone has access to (in the browser) ---js is dynamically typed, which I think is easier for people to grok (I learned Java first, and for months I was puzzled by this "public static void main (String args…
"public static void main (String args[])" - that would put anyone off, and for good reason, it's total bollocks. Either "main" is special or it's not, if it is why tell java stuff it already knows. If the jvm wants to run something that's public and called main and has a method signature of string array then why not dispense with all the nonsense - the answer's simple - it's java - the most verbose boiler-plate laden…
What does Java's supposed verbosity have to do with the comment you replied to about learning JavaScript?
On an unrelated note, main in python is not a whole lot better. By the time you get through __name__ == "__main__", import sys and use sys.argv you're not really winning much over public static void main. The nice thing about python is that you don't have to start worryin about main since you can just run it as a script to start, which is definitely great for beginners, but that doesn't exactly justify the argument you were trying to make about the verbosity of Java.
Re: What to tell noobs who want to "learn coding"?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with this completely, and I'll make a specific claim: eloquentjavascript.net is the best book to use. ---it's an online book that lets you run code right in the book ---it's the language of the REPL that everyone has access to (in the browser) ---js is dynamically typed, which I think is easier for people to grok (I learned Java first, and for months I was puzzled by this "public static void main (String args…
"public static void main (String args[])" - that would put anyone off, and for good reason, it's total bollocks. Either "main" is special or it's not, if it is why tell java stuff it already knows. If the jvm wants to run something that's public and called main and has a method signature of string array then why not dispense with all the nonsense - the answer's simple - it's java - the most verbose boiler-plate laden…
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I mostly agree with this. Java is full of convoluted convention. Today, I would probably start with javascript or
Ruby. However, I love that I really got started with ObjC.
BTW: Don't all C based apps begin with a call to main (all Mac / iOS apps):
int main(int argc, const char * argv[])
Re: What to tell noobs who want to "learn coding"?
#44Get them to make something on http://neocities.org because it's not hard, it has visual results they can show to anyone, and once they're comfortable with the basics of the site have them read a javascript book.
Moving quickly and freely (in any direction) at the beginning helps keep interest levels up, where an 800 page book on Java might squash their energy. Plus, if you only have the basic-basics of web stuff you start to chafe pretty quickly, and that's great motivation.
Re: What to tell noobs who want to "learn coding"?
#45It depends on what they mean. If it's a physics grad student who wants to learn coding, I assume they need to do high performance work and point them straight to C so they can learn the fundamentals first on memory management, the stack, and so on.
Usually, I ask them what they want to do with code and go from there. Sometimes, I realize that all they really want to learn is HTML and CSS. Other times, I really do feel like the "hardcore" approach would be more fulfilling, albeit slower.
Re: What to tell noobs who want to "learn coding"?
#46[deleted]
Re: What to tell noobs who want to "learn coding"?
#47A few good books. I like Python as a first language, but to each their own.
https://github.com/karan/Projects has a good set of first projects, ranging from straight algorithm practice to actual app and full project work. My younger brother is following something very similar, and it's working quite well so far.
Re: What to tell noobs who want to "learn coding"?
#48There are many things you could tell someone to get them started in programming. Here's one:
http://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/
Offer to answer questions when they have them.
If they get through that, talk about what kind of programming they'd like to do, and point them toward their first resource. Offer to help. If they actually still want to code, they'll go from there.
Re: What to tell noobs who want to "learn coding"?
#49If you want to make a chart, by all means use Excel.
But what if you want to make a chart maker?
Re: What to tell noobs who want to "learn coding"?
#50Ask them what they want to build. Learning code for the sake of it will always be disappointing. You learn better coding towards a project then just aimlessly learning concepts.