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Journal
This'll be a journal where I can record any thoughts I have as I learn some new programming tool.
- I'm noticing that as I make progress on the Ruby on Rails tutorial and Elenco 130-in-1 guide, I'm becoming more excited. Seeing my progress and thinking about the future things I'll be able to accomplish is really motivating me in an incredible way. I'd known what Schwarzenegger said about the importance of keeping records, but I didn't expect it to happen in this situation.
- just as with the LSAT, it seems the #1 concern a person should have is remaining motivated:
Quote:
[my friend] (9:04:17 PM): I don't try to use it to get rich because it's very boring
[my friend] (9:04:26 PM): and I'd rather be trying to self-improve than to make money
[my friend] (9:04:47 PM): any type of problem solving and learning
[my friend] (9:04:53 PM): I think is more constructive
[my friend] (9:04:59 PM): then repeatedly solving things out of my toolbox
[my friend] (9:05:06 PM): acquiring the toolbox was useful but
[my friend] (9:05:12 PM): coding @ industry standards is not
[my friend] (9:05:29 PM): unless you're very very lucky and they have you fix what no one else can figure out or something
[my friend] (9:05:33 PM): or let you do whatever you want
[...]
[my friend] (9:05:53 PM): I got very bored doing coding projects at MIT because it was very
[my friend] (9:05:57 PM): "do this design document"
[my friend] (9:06:49 PM): it's also more motivating hacking together your own project
Beginner-level
General
Roadmaps
- Undated - Peter Norvig - Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
- 2011.09.20 - Signal vs. Noise - Four tips for learning how to program
- Learn by doing. Work on a project you find interesting. Don’t try to learn to program solely academically, by reading.
- Do what you can. (NW: Like when you go to the gym.) Get as much of the project done as you can.
- The going is usually very slow at this phase, with lots of false starts and backtracking as I learn what works and what doesn’t.
- Posting to mailing lists or forums or IRC and asking for help are not so useful to me.
- If the problem I’m tackling is large, I try to break it into small bits first.
- This is where TDD really shines. It forces you to take the problem apart and think of it in the most atomic pieces.
- Ask experienced people to review your code and let you know what you could've done better.
- 2012.03 - Jimmy Li - Learning to Code: The Roadmap I Wish I Had Been Given
- 2016.10.24 - Medium - Melinda Byerley - Learning To Code: For My 14 Year Old Niece
- A comment I added:
Hi Melinda! I’m basically self-taught and I’ve spent a few years thinking about this issue, and the recommended path I’ve arrived at is:
Start by learning how to write simple programs that move the mouse around and send keyboard-presses; that’s the fastest/easiest way I’ve seen knowledge of programming translate into a real-world benefit for the person learning how to program (I’m a huge fan of AutoHotkey because it’s so easy to install and get started with, but it’s Windows-only). If the person is in the workforce and has a job where she uses Excel, then I would recommend she also start by getting comfortable with Excel formulas and writing simple VBA macros. If she’s into gaming, she should also try starting by learning to create mods (eg a Minecraft mod) rather than creating games from scratch. Once she’s comfortable with those I recommend learning how to automatically send emails, scrape websites, and build websites with Python and PythonAnywhere.com. (Python is my favorite programming language but IMO it has a steeper learning curve than AutoHotkey/Excel/modding before a total newbie to programming will feel comfortable doing useful stuff with it.) And from there, if she has some kind of specific situation where she needs to pick up another language, she can learn about other languages.
Here’s a video of me and my friend walking through how to use AutoHotkey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ULy4KmAYbU
Analogies
Cooking
Visualizations
Websites
Books
Lists
Individual books
Computer Architecture
Introductions to Programming
Computer Science Ideas
- Foundations of Computer Science by Aho and Ullman - now free online!
- I'm on page 11 of the Chapter 3 pdf, p99 of the book itself. It's been slow-going b/c I want to understand as much of his math notation as possible.
Bootcamps
Dev Bootcamp (dead)
Coding Dojo
Fullstack Academy
Hack Reactor
MakerSquare
- Praise
- https://medium.com/@donovanwhitworth/i-attended-makersquare-in-2014-it-was-a-ruby-sinatra-rails-javascript-curriculum-then-c6e5f400cc2c
- I attended MakerSquare in 2014 (it was a Ruby/Sinatra/Rails/JavaScript curriculum then). I do not have a college degree and I got my first offer five days after graduation. There is no way I would have been prepared to get a junior developer job without attending bootcamp. It absolutely changed my life. I went from making ~$30k a year before boot to making ~$70k, and now 2 years on I’m making six figures, and even more importantly, I love my work.
I am the software engineering lead for my company (doesn’t mean I’m senior…. it means I go to meetings :p ), programming in Ruby, JavaScript, Java and Scala and still learning new things every day. I’m also getting a CS degree part-time now, which I would have never been inspired to attain if I did not attend MakerSquare.
Maybe the bootcamp experience is different now that the market is saturated, but from what I hear, Hack Reactor is a well regarded program. MakerSquare was worth every penny and more for me.
The Recurse Center (aka Hacker School)
Turing School of Software and Design
Intermediate-level
- Stanford - CS107 - Programming Paradigms
- Highly recommended by Mike Krieger here
- CS107 (Programming Paradigms) this is the class where I learned to think like a programmer, almost entirely from Jerry Cain. I still remember the assignments in this class, more so than almost any other one.