The "Hello World" To Programming

If you have suddenly got interested to get into programming, maybe because your school finally started teaching a programming language (that too most probably during the last years of school life) and/or you surf online to find the cool stuff that people do with programming or you are fascinated by the knowledge and skill that experts have. Either way, the fact that you have stumbled upon this article tells me that you seem lost between all the technical terms and streams of programming like Machine Learning or Web Development and don't know where to start and are searching for a map to guide you. In this article, you will get some beginner-tips and resources from a friend who is still going through the learning curve in programming (it is endless and tending to infinity).

Learn a Programming Language

It can be any language that interests you. Although you will find many posts that say that you should only start with languages whose syntax is beginner-friendly and can be used as a multi-purpose language like python or javascript and then go onto advance languages like C, Java, etc.. It does sound like the sensible way thing to do but really it does not matter as long as you start learning and stick to the process. And it will take time to get familiar with a language and that is okay. Learn the different Data Structures and their implementation in the language you are learning. Start learning to write pseudocode to basic problems like printing tables or calculating taxes etc. Remember, coding is neither about just building cool stuff nor is it only for nerds. It is just a cool game and like at the start of all games; you are still learning the rules, you feel like you are a noob and you will take time to make friends and learn tricks. So keep in mind that you won't score your first points easily and you will definitely not become a champion right-away, it will take time. Coding is a game of solving problems and this game has given the world many winners.

Understanding the Implementations of the Language

Let's assume you start with python. Once you get used to the basic syntax its time to get into the field and learn what the language can do. As for python, in this case, you can do a bunch of stuff. From building small games with pygame, building websites with frameworks like Django or Flask, automating web browsing with Selenium or even building Machine Learning models, the list is endless. Once you know what you want to do, start researching what you will have to learn next. But you have to keep a few things in mind for this. By now you would have come across basic algorithms like those for sorting and searching. You would have learned to implement them in code and also felt a feeling of triumph when you saw that code work, the code that you built from scratch. But you do not have to memorize that code now. You have to understand that when big coding projects are made the programmer does not write everything from scratch. If he wants to implement a complex sorting algorithm he/she does not write the complete code. The code will always be there online and/or in modules/packages from where they can be easily implemented. Thus you have to realize that it is the understanding of the code that is more important and not the code itself. GitHub has a big repository of code of very big projects/companies. If, say, you get interested in Machine Learning(ML) after understanding what it is from the previous resources, go to GitHub and search for a project on ML. You will surely not understand anything, but do not panic. you will see words like import or include, search what those mean. Then you will see libraries/modules like numpy and pandas. Search and understand how to use them too and just let this recursive keep going till you reach your end goal of understanding machine learning code. After that expand your understanding.