New Skills, Python, etc. : An Irritatingly Sincere Post

spiers:

So here’s a newbie question for programmers: if you were starting from scratch as one of The Olds (which I am, vis-a-vis most people who learn Python as a starter language), what would you do? What would you read? How would you practice?

So what would you do?

Of course I’ll answer a question with a question: What do you want to accomplish?

And actually, that’s my advice. Don’t start with the mindset of “how do I learn this?” or “how can I practice?” Start like this: what do I want to build?

And don’t worry so much about the language choice yet. Fundamentals, first! All computer languages have the same basic principles: variables (strings, numbers, etc.), conditional statements, loops, arrays, classes. And then probably SQL. Once you get that down, the differences in syntax will look easy.

But okay, ya gotta start somewhere. Dig in. The absolute best scenario is to find something that needs to be fixed. Look at existing code, try to figure out what’s going on, see if you can fix a problem. Some of the best developers I know got started as script kittens who just wanted to fix things, and soon found they could learn Java over a long weekend. If you can’t find “something to fix,” then find something small you want to build. Maybe find a way to parse your Twitter feed and display it here (or whatever — something like that).

And finally, whatever you do, don’t listen to me. With a little time, you’ll pick it up no matter what you do. Like blogging!