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Agree with most of it except its not that thats the wrong question its just that the answer is to try . Get started and build something. Stumbling and not knowing already but figuring it out are part of the process and are valuable skills. Also the whole buy a mac thing. It never ceases to amaze me how many people completely fail to realize how much privilege it takes to have the money to purchase a mac. Or the time…
Bad answers can be ad-ridden, no-content crap, bikeshedding pundits, obsolete documentation, overkill solutions, corporate labyrinth websites selling overkill solutions, incomplete fragmented mailing list archives, or material way too dense and advanced to be consumed without guidance. But they lead to frustration and often to more bad questions.
Sometimes the answers aren't bad, they're just decidedly suboptimal. If your friend wanted to make a website, and you left it up to them to go google the answer, there's a good chance they'll end up using GoDaddy.
Chances are if you see this question, it means someone thinks you, either individually or as part of some community, will give them better answers than a machine will.
1) Dreamers. They have something that nobody will do for them, so they're going to see how easy it is to do for themselves. They won't make it.
2) Doers. They don't have a single project. They have multiple projects. The projects are swimming in their head and they need to get them out. They just need a nudge in the right direction, but more help is almost always better.
Notice that neither of them are asking the wrong question. It's just a matter of follow-through. Given even a tiny bit of direction, the doers will make it there... But you can't start walking until you have some idea where the destination is. That's all they want.
No. It is exactly the right question. Suppose the person hasn't already asked this question to google: Take the opportunity to provide them some good resources. Teach them some basics. Teach them how to use google well to find their own resources. Here's the kicker - when people ask questions like this, maybe they aren't autodidacts, maybe they just need some support getting over the fear of the unknown, maybe they j…
That is the point of this post, to get them over the fear, to give them the confidence to do it. Having a personal tutor can accelerate the learning process dramatically. Even if you can teach yourself, you can learn faster if someone just tells you the answer. But, you can also just do it. And, the process will teach you the benefits of being precise with your searches and that if you know to use the work "toggle" r…
To get to a point where googling and reading can be really effective (for most people... there are some who can just naturally pick something up) it helps to have someone work one-on-one with the confusion that may otherwise be insurmountable. Not just accelerate learning, but in fact, enable it at all.
There is a very real problem in teaching at all levels where research will show that using new methods and alternate course progressions help students get it faster, but the experts in the subject matter will veto it because it is not the way they learned or presents things in a way that seems too round-about from the expert point of view -- ignoring the difference between those who have the framework and those who need to get the framework.
You can give them a huge leg up by giving them a programming vocabulary to help them on their way.
There's that famous saying about once you have a name for something the problem is pretty much solved...
You can also help them heaps by telling them what's important and what is not important. Most books on programming languages etc start with a whole bunch of stuff they should probably put into the basket of "computer trivia I don't need to know yet"...
Agree with most of it except its not that thats the wrong question its just that the answer is to try . Get started and build something. Stumbling and not knowing already but figuring it out are part of the process and are valuable skills. Also the whole buy a mac thing. It never ceases to amaze me how many people completely fail to realize how much privilege it takes to have the money to purchase a mac. Or the time…
I think the assumption here is that if someone asks you, “I want to learn to code, what should I do?” they know you already, since if they were asking the anonymous internet hordes, they're already basically doing what this post suggests. If you ask someone you know for advice, you aren't going to get the same thing you get if you ask Google, and you aren't even necessarily looking for the same thing. I was in exactl…
> Use your friends
These are good bits of advice. I would also encourage folks here to realize just how far programming is from what most people do all day. When you live in Windows XP all day, grew up with Windows, and spend your time talking with people about, in my case, medicine, and family in the evenings, programming isn't even on the periphery. It's on the other side of a freaking ocean. In the few occasions I've actually met a programmer and talked with them, it is a fantastically rare luxury, and I have learned to try and ask the best questions I can when I have those moments. Most don't want to "talk about work".
It can be a long (years) slog. In my case I had to figure out enough networking to be given an old CPU in exchange for setting up a router. Then figuring out how to burn and load a SuSE on it (10.3, with a very broken Zypper -- imagine suffering with that as your first distro when you don't even know if it's your fault and don't know anyone who can help). Then I had to figure out enough command line stuff to not be totally lost (and forget huge numbers of one-liners, not sure if they would be useful in the future). Then try about 10 different languages trying to find what works. Oh, did I mention learning Vi and Emacs with nothing but Google?
To anyone out there alone in the woods, trying to learn this on their own, I definitely recommend buying Lutz's Learning Python and read what of it you need to while working through Zed Shaw's Learn Python the Hard Way. And have questions ready in case you ever find yourself sitting next to a professional programmer on a bus in Okinawa.
This article promotes introversion more than its own point of "don't ask, do", asking Mr. Computer isn't much different than asking a person. If I ask someone how to get started doing X; I'm not fucking asking permission. I'm looking for some resources, a knowledgeable person is a much better at steering a beginner than a search engine.
For some reason, you're equating drive with choice of resource. You're answering "RTFM" when the question is "Wheres the manual?" I get that your point centers on leaning on others vs figuring it out on your own, but you thoroughly overshot.