

Ask HN: Non-Techie trying to learn code. Please help with my course outline - siruva07

Hi HN,<p>I'm a non-techie biz guy who wants to learn how to code. I signed up for membership at ThinkVitamin (run by Carsonified) and they have an awesome library of tutorials. But what they're lacking is a roadmap for learning these languages. Could any please give me some guidance? My ultimate goal is to start playing around with building my own web app, or at least have a better understanding of code.<p>The courses available are:<p>HTML &#38; CSS (already watched),
Javascript (already watched),
HTML5,
JQuery,
JavaScript,
UX,
CSS3,
Design,
Ruby,
PHP,
Ruby on Rails,
NoSQL,
Accessibility,<p>Thanks!
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rajeshamara
The courses you lined up are pretty good. You should stick with one scripting
language for now. Once you are comfortable with one, you can pick up the other
one later. You will always find people who will say php is better than ROR,
ROR better than python. Don't listen to them. I will say pick one stick with
one. Once you mastered its not a big deal to go on to other languages.

Before you start, understand the basic architecture of web based technology.
Try to understand how http works in basic.

Just because you watched some videos and went through tutorials you won't be
able to program. What you need to do is practice practice and practice. If you
can't get in 100th time you should try 101st time. Another thing you need is
passion. You should like what you are doing. If you are coding for the heck of
it, you will not be able to code.

~~~
spooneybarger
I would say this, some languages are easier than others when it comes to
helping you follow good coding practices. You can create crap in any language
but some make it easier than others to write good code.

As an example, Javascript. You can write beautiful code in Javascript and it
isn't that hard but to do it, you need to to understand closures. Closures
aren't the easy topic for a new programmer to grasp immediately so it might
not be the best language. I would say that python and ruby are better for
making it easy to learn good practices compared to php, perl or javascript and
would suggest either of those as a first language to start learning with. It
doesn't have to be the language you stick with but both are good for getting
you going. You aren't out of the woods by picking either of them but I think
you will find the experience easier. Of the two, I would lean towards python
as it has a very 'one proper way to do it' approach which is easy on
beginners. That said, you can't go wrong with either. If you want to venture
slightly further afield, both scheme and smalltalk are excellent languages to
do as a first language. If either of those tickle your fancy, I would look at
racket for a scheme implementation and pharo for the smalltalk. Pharo has
learning tools when you fire it up and racket has a ton of learning materials.

The first two languages I learned where a Forth variant and a straight up
machine language. So any language can be your first one. I realized later on
that while I had learned to program, I hadn't learned to do it well and went
back and studied the hows and whys which I think any of the 4 above would be
very good places to start with.

EDIT:

One last note, if you decide to go with Javascript, I strongly urge you to
read 'Javascript: The Good Parts' very early on in the process.

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nitefly
Learning programming fundamentals (flow control, common data structures,
object-oriented programming, etc.) may be more useful than learning several
different languages. I know Python isn't on your list of available courses,
but I do like the Python tutorial (<http://docs.python.org/tutorial/>) as an
introduction to programming fundamentals.

Having a project like a web app is a goal is a great idea; there's really no
substitute for experience.

Good luck!

------
SanjayUttam
You might wanna read/watch something about "typical SQL" databases (MySQL?) to
compliment the NoSQL. Enjoy!

~~~
siruva07
thanks!

