Introduction to programming (Python)- help with materials

[Thestatusquo]

I'm standing by that opinion. Working at a slightly lower level means you understand how stuff works behind the scenes. Java is okay too.

100% disagree. In fact, I think this mindset is actively harmful. You should learn the basics of coding on something that has very grokkable syntax and isn't an impediment to learning the basic concepts of the craft. You don't need to go low level to do this, in fact, going low level is distracting when all you need to know to get started is "what is a string" and you have like 3 impediments to that basic lesson. Ultimately, languages are super easy to pick up once you grok the basics, so saying "you should start with a low level language" seems iffy to me, since its way easier to learn on a language that is not C.

I'm partial to ruby myself, as its the language I learned with, but python is very similar and is perfectly fine for learning.

I second both the suggestions made by accountant wrt materials. Codecademy is quite good for someone who is going in with no experience because they really start each course with the assumption that you know nothing, which is frustrating for me but is probably pretty useful for someone who actually is new.

First things first, get yourself an editor. I'm partial to sublime text myself, but ultimately your editor matters less than learning it. At this stage it doesnt matter very much at all. This is another reason why I would suggest sublime text. It's free and its very user friendly for a beginner.

Second things first, find yourself a good book. I can personally recommend the one that accountant mentioned, but there are plenty of others. Go through the codeacademy stuff and the book stuff at roughly the same pace, so that you are reinforcing your learning of one with the other. If you find that one works better for you, focus primarily on that, but don't stop doing the other things. The repetition is good for you!

Last things last, once you've got the basics of writing simple programs down (types, loops, etc) you're going to start learning how to turn that code into actual things that do stuff.

I can't recommend this free algo course from stanford enough. It will really hammer into you the basics of algorithm design and it will really get you started along the path of thinking like a programmer:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorith ... n-analysis

in addition to that, once you're at this stage you can start introducing yourself to some web frameworks if you're at all interested in web dev stuff.

for instance django is a common web development framework for python. What is a framework? DON'T WORRY ABOUT THAT YET. Just come back to this post later after the other stuff and oh hey look its a nifty little tutorial for your first django app. (https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/intro/tutorial01/)

these things will get you well on your way.

Feel free to ping me if you get stuck anywhere.

Oh and the most important piece of advice I can give you is this: google is your friend. I know when I was first learning I had this idea in my head that it was cheating to look things up on google when I got stuck. Now that I do this shit professionally, I know that googling is at least 30% of what I do. Don't think it's wrong or cheating. Ask yourself this instead: Do I understand what I just did? If the answer is yes then you're golden. If its no then go read some more and do it again.

[Thestatusquo]

Guys keep in mind that you're talking to a beginner. Terms like interpreted language vs compiled language and low level and high level are intuitive to us, but someone just starting out isn't going to know what that means.

You can explain those terms if you want, and that would be helpful, but what is probably more helpful is if you find yourself using terms like that it's probably a 'code smell’ that you're getting too advanced for someone who is literally just starting out.

[Thestatusquo]

Also, my Mech. Eng. degree had a total of one required programming course, and they decided to divide the semester 50-50 between Fortran and C. The logic of whoever instated the curriculum was a mixture of "university is about TEACHING YOU HOW TO THINK SO THAT YOU CAN LEARN MORE EASILY IN THE FUTURE (from people who aren't us), not teaching useful, employable skills that might become obsolete someday, so we'll start with the hardest of the hard!" and "we've used Fortran since the 70s, and we'll be damned if we're gonna change, so let's train the next batch of potential grad student lackeys early."

C wasn't

so

bad for a beginner, though (with the caveat that we only learned as much as can be crammed into half a semester, so probably didn't get to the worst parts).

This course sounds like it was devised by satan himself.

Fortran? People still use fortran???

[Thestatusquo]

So this is the high quality education that people go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt for

Also, mina is canadian, so no.