Ask HN: Best programming course for an absolute beginner?

2 points·kharak··4 comments

A friend of mine, who has a banking background, asked me for a code/programming course recommendation. He isn't technically inclined, but I believe he's in the perfect spot to take up something new. Hence, I like to give a great recommendation, but have a hard time judging what would be a good choice for an absolute beginner.

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This question almost always needs further qualification, to determine what the goal is. Learning to program is different from preparing for a new career. You get the drift.

That said, for "pure" learning to program, I like the DrRacket IDE and the course book "How to Design Programs" ( http://htdp.org/ ) because it teaches problem solving with programming. And that's what it's about. Should give a newb a sense of whether this is something they want to spend their time doing.

The concept are transferable to other languages; the specific language skills not so much.

Lets say he'd like to explore programming first and take something usable for his day to day work. I thought about finding something with VBA, as he's doing a good amount of his work with office products, but Python might be suitable, too.

I like recommending “How to automate the boring stuff with Python”: http://automatetheboringstuff.com/. And if they’re still interested after a few chapters of that: Harvard’s CS50.

Your friend needs to start a few to see if any are actually for a beginner, or for a beginner with experience.

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