Next Language - Suggestions?

[LionWaffles]

Hey guys! I know I really don't post often in here, but whad'ya know? Here I am.

Anyway, I'm here because I just finished up a JavaScript course on CodeCademy and just need to perfect my skills in JS, and then I'll be done with JS. I currently know HTML, CSS, and now JS. I really want to stick to CodeCademy and I have many options, and I'm wondering which one I should go about learning next.

 

Here are my options:

1. Saas
2. Command Line
3. Python
4. jQuery
5. ReactJS
6. AngularJS
7. Ruby
8. Ruby on Rails
9. Java
10. Git
11. PHP
12. Watson API

Thanks for any feedback.

[dannytech357]

First, I would suggest that you do wander away from CodeCademy just a tiny bit. My strategy would be to study something on CodeCademy and then make yourself a "final project" requirement, where you have to apply those. In CodeCademy, you're told what you need to achieve, but when writing code you need to learn how to think through a project and be very flexible in your creativity, so find a fun way you can apply those skills to a project of your own inspiration.

 

As for the actual languages, there are a few paths you could take. I think a good route to continue on would be learning the command line, but also learning other tools at the same time. For instance, learning git and the command line at the same time, as git requires the use of the command line. It also depends what platforms you want to work on.  If you want to continue with frontend development, stick to libraries like jQuery, ReactJS, and AngularJS (these are libraries, not languages, and are all extensions of JavaScript, so they'd be right in your ballpark). If you want to get more into the backend, try PHP, Ruby/Rails, or NodeJS. For scripting, Python's a good step, and for desktop applications, try Java or C# or C++. I've never personally used the Watson API, so I can't comment on whether that's a good option for you, but I've heard great things about the platform!

[bgibbz]

8 minutes ago, dannytech357 said:

First, I would suggest that you do wander away from CodeCademy just a tiny bit. My strategy would be to study something on CodeCademy and then make yourself a "final project" requirement, where you have to apply those. In CodeCademy, you're told what you need to achieve, but when writing code you need to learn how to think through a project and be very flexible in your creativity, so find a fun way you can apply those skills to a project of your own inspiration.

 

 

I absolutley agree with this. While websites are great learning tools, the only way to learn to program is to actually program. Come up with ideas of little projects to do, it doenst have to be very difficult. I self tought myself JavaScript, css, html, and jquery through this strategy. I am also currently teaching my self C using this as well. Read up on the syntax, learn the basics of the logic, and then come up with small little projects. When i was teaching myself the web development suite, I did all kinds of cool projects from a simple text based choose your own adventure too eventually designing an entire study game for the periodic table because we happened to be working on that in Chem class. I suggest using the website koding for this, basically you get a dedicated VM where you can create projects and view them on the internet for free. 

 

As far as languages go, I strongly suggest learning C followed by C++. It really gives you an appreciation for modern languages when a task as mundane as receiving text based input has to be written out in a relatively long function rather than simply using an HTML input tag. I strongly beleive that knowledge builds, so to know the most basic aspects of a given topic (in this case programming, with c and c++ being the basics)  will really help down the line if you ever learn any other languages. The most important advice I can give you is to keep it fun. Always play around with simple projects. At the end of the day, solving exercises will help, but not in any real world application. 

 

I strongly recomend using this site - https://www.codewars.com/

 

Its basically a place where you try to solve community created puzzles. Programming is a mindset, and this really expands your mind, even if you are an expert programmer. 

[dannytech357]

1 minute ago, bgibbz said:

I absolutley agree with this. While websites are great learning tools, the only way to learn to program is to actually program. Come up with ideas of little projects to do, it doenst have to be very difficult. I self tought myself JavaScript, css, html, and jquery through this strategy. I am also currently teaching my self C using this as well. Read up on the syntax, learn the basics of the logic, and then come up with small little projects. When i was teaching myself the web development suite, I did all kinds of cool projects from a simple text based choose your own adventure too eventually designing an entire study game for the periodic table because we happened to be working on that in Chem class. I suggest using the website koding for this, basically you get a dedicated VM where you can create projects and view them on the internet for free. 

 

As far as languages go, I strongly suggest learning C followed by C++. It really gives you an appreciation for modern languages when a task as mundane as receiving text based input has to be written out in a relatively long function rather than simply using an HTML input tag. I strongly beleive that knowledge builds, so to know the most basic aspects of a given topic (in this case programming, with c and c++ being the basics)  will really help down the line if you ever learn any other languages. The most important advice I can give you is to keep it fun. Always play around with simple projects. At the end of the day, solving exercises will help, but not in any real world application. 

 

I strongly recomend using this site - https://www.codewars.com/

 

Its basically a place where you try to solve community created puzzles. Programming is a mindset, and this really expands your mind, even if you are an expert programmer. 

And I completely agree with this. If we're on the topic of challenges, right now there is a challenge called the Advent of Code: https://adventofcode.com/. Basically, every day, a new challenge is posted for you to work through, and they aren't language specific, and simply require you to think through them. It's a great way to learn, because every day there's a new crazy challenge to keep your mind warm in the cold weather of winter. I also agree with the C and C++ recommendations, those will help you understand almost every other language you work with on a much more advanced level. As for IDEs, there are also a few others:

 

Cloud9 IDE (https://c9.io/) - My favorite, and everyday workhorse, it's built by the same people who built the Ace editor, and it uses that. It also supports a ton of languages, and is also just a VM in the cloud that you have complete control of.

Codeanywhere (https://codeanywhere.com/) - Same deal, also a cloud VM, very simple interface and is very easy to use, but I found it less useful for large projects, and often ran out of resources, especially in my learning workspaces where I sometimes had fairly large projects and past projects.

 

If you don't want to use a Cloud IDE and just want a simple IDE, try one of these:

 

Atom (https://atom.io/) - An IDE by GitHub, designed to be hackable, and is quite popular due to the many plugins available, built on Electron

Visual Studio Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/) - By Microsoft, similar to Atom but with less plugins and more built in functionality. Also open source, and built on Electron

 

There are a few others, depending on the language, and more complicated ones like Visual Studio, Eclipse, and IDEA, to name a few.

[Gachr]

I agree with the guys above. I really don't like Codecademy, why? You can have a read here:

So, you talked about "perfecting" your JS skills and leaving it. That's not a good idea at all, I looked at JS syllabus there and it just scratches the surface, only teaches you basic syntax of the language. Here I assumed that you want to carry on with JS, but do you?

 

I will use here an analogy with real-life languages.

You are to choose what language you should learn - English, Spanish, Russian, or perhaps Chinese?

It all depends on what you want to do with the language.

 

You might want to learn English if you want to talk with many people around the world, understand mainstream media, or perhaps you want to live in an English-speaking country in the future.

You might want to learn Spanish if you live in the South of US and want to understand Latinos there, you are interested in the culture, or would like to visit Latin America or Spain.

You might want to learn Russian if you play CS:GO or DOTA2 and want to understand players there, like hot Russian women, you think it's a cool language to know, especially with its alphabet and large user base on the internet, or you would like to visit Russia. (yes, I know Russian, been learning it for a while )

You might want to learn Chinese if you love China's culture, it's an interesting language, and you'd like to visit the country.

(Just be cautious about the "interesting" part, just like with programming language, satisfying your curiosity might not be worth the time.)

 

So, what do you want to do? That's what really matters. Please answer this, and then we can tell you where you should look.

 

Edit: Ah, and continuing the analogy - no matter which language you choose, you need to learn how to write and speak, they are universal skills in any language. It's the same in programming - no matter which path you choose, you will have to learn the command line for example.

[typographie]

This is a CSS framework, not a language… but have you tried to work with Bootstrap yet? It's simple and probably won't take you long to figure out how to use it, but it's very important for modern responsive web design. I'm not sure if Codecademy offers it, but you can probably get a good understanding just by reading a bit about it on w3schools.

[mtwest]

Are you trying to focus on lower level web-development skills?
Before a recommendation, could we get some info on what you are hoping to do with this knowledge?

[vorticalbox]

3 hours ago, Erik Sieghart said:

PHP if you're interested in web stuff. Also git.

100% git. I have just finished my degree in computing science and for a language they picked visual basic, that no one uses in the industry and at no point were we shown how to use git for version control.

 

I found it very worrying that the stuff I learnt out of education is more useful to me than most of my degree, in terms of programming.

[Fourier]

I recommend Java, Python, and command line. Java is the most popular application language and would serve as a good introduction to data structures, access protection, and strong typing. Python is the most popular scripting language, and with regard to the command line it's useful to know how to automate things on a Unix-like server. Unix-like operating systems are really cool in that way. You can make shell scripts in windows too, but linux is free and has more built in functionality (compared with home edition). Want to make automatic backups of your Minecraft server? Surprisingly easy. Want to start your Minecraft server on startup? Surprisingly easy. Want to make your server send you an email when an update fails? Surprisingly easy.