Help, I don’t know where to start | Hacker News Reader

Help, I don’t know where to start

Hey so I’m trying to get into coding but I have no idea where to start. I’ve already done some coding in the past but it was just a simple one at my school and now I’m too old for it. So I guess my questions are: where do I start? Should I find a community, read a book, get an app? What language should I learn, or does it even matter? Please, if anyone has any advise I would love to learn more!

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Get to the nearest community college, talk to a career counselor and get started on a CS degree. Don't try to do it alone. If you were inclined to do it alone you would have done it already. Be very focused on getting your degree. Also, remember that your goal is to learn. Many students get the mistaken idea that you go to school to get a diploma. No, you are there to learn. Make sure you learn as much as possible so you can get a job after you graduate. Employers are unlikely to care about your diploma but they will be very interested in what you know so they will test you before they offer you a job. Good luck.

Go on YouTube. There are whole courses on there. For some slightly better quality you can also explore Udemy, which is always running sales on courses.

If you google “Learn (language)” or “(language) tutorial” there are good beginner tutorials for every major language.

My first language in the 80’s was BASIC which is a great starter language, I’d say see if you can find that and then jump to Python which is still pretty easy to grasp but touches on a lot of universal coding concepts. It’s also very practical and useful in industry.

Consider why you want to do this. Maybe there are multiple reasons.

Do you learn best with a cohort of others, or do you find it fulfilling to put tireless hours into a solo project?

What works for me is set some boundaries and work within those, even if the project and language aren’t “perfect“, otherwise I get lost in the possibilities and sink into an anxious mess.

Good luck!

In my opinion the best languages that you can start with are JavaScript or Python.

Reasons: 1 - Lots of online materials for both of them 2 - They are both beginner friendly 3 - With JavaScript you can build any type of app that you want 4 - With Python you can get into Machine Learning later on

And a lot of material isn't good enough, sorry, I had to step in. Since I am self taught.

Mozilla MDN and maybe Freecodecamp have the answer. But there's so much more around it.

I'm using books.

Just start with anything. The entry point is not really important looking back.

What is important is to not stop, but continue and adapt along the way.

TL;DR: check out Brad Traversy's youtube video tutorials.

It depends on what you want to code.

I am going to assume web development and building some variant of websites and web apps since it my wheelhouse and there are a lot of jobs out there paying decent for this right now.

Assuming this is what you want, I'd really watch and code along with Brad Traversy on YouTube. He's even got a "Web Developer Guide for 2022" video that just came out that goes through a high level overview of what a modern Web Dev should know and learn. He's a great teacher and some very cheap and great courses on Udemy.

I created a detailed list of his tutorials with times and costs on what I would reco for learning HTML, CSS, and Javascript as a comment to someone's HN post. I'll find it and add it here for you.

I really have ZERO affiliation with Udemy or Brad Traversy, I just really like his method of teaching, and as a 10+ year web dev veteran, it is very refreshing to see someone clearly teach intro and advanced topics clearly.

Good luck.

EDIT: found the link to the list of my reco'd Travesy tutorials for Frontend Web Dev: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30177167

Thanks so much guys! I will definitely take y’all’s advice!!

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