Is anyone here very good at writing code? If so, where would you suggest a noob start?

[minimalist]

Just as the title says.  I know nothing.  Literally, nothing.  I want to learn.  Where do I begin?

[Tmh85]

Codeacademy.com

[Tea1337]

Definitely codeacademy.com, or you can try to learn all off of things such as msdn, youtube tutorials also.

[fitchfapper]

For dummies books are ALWAYS a good place to start no matter what subject you would like to learn about.

[_wky]

Another one for Codecademy.com

I've learnt Python and am now learning JavaScript there.

[xXxYOLOxSWAGxXx_420BlazeIt]

I would NOT recommend codeacademy. You should be learning how to look things up in the places you need, and learning to read documentation.

 

What are you wanting to create? Desktop apps? Websites?

[scottyboy]

Depends on what you want to learn and if the coding is for fun or career/education related. Codecademy is good place to start for learning syntax of certain languages and giving you realtime feeback on what affect your code is having to help you understand. If you want to learn for carer/education reasons then I agree with BL▲Z€ !✞ ΝΕΓĎ in that you should be looking up coding sites and reading coding books/documentation.

 

Once you get past this it's best to use sites like stack overflow for code snippets and advice on what your trying to create. I've created a few tools for my work in C# and stack overflow is pretty much my go to resource for help. 

[Toxiclegend]

There are a fair few places you can start, w3schools.com, codeacademy.com stackoverflow.com, but this all entirely depends on what you want to do with your code. I've taught myself a few things and coding is fun when it works a nightmare when it doesn't It's still a good thing to learn and I do it as a job.

[minimalist]

I would NOT recommend codeacademy. You should be learning how to look things up in the places you need, and learning to read documentation.

 

What are you wanting to create? Desktop apps? Websites?

 

Websites, mobile-friendly websites.  Websites to shop on.  

 

is there much of a difference between apps and website coding?

 

Depends on what you want to learn and if the coding is for fun or career/education related. Codecademy is good place to start for learning syntax of certain languages and giving you realtime feeback on what affect your code is having to help you understand. If you want to learn for carer/education reasons then I agree with BL▲Z€ !✞ ΝΕΓĎ in that you should be looking up coding sites and reading coding books/documentation.

 

Once you get past this it's best to use sites like stack overflow for code snippets and advice on what your trying to create. I've created a few tools for my work in C# and stack overflow is pretty much my go to resource for help. 

 

It's for career.  Rather than pay someone to build a website to sell my product on I want to do it myself.  I have a year or so to learn how to code.

[xXxYOLOxSWAGxXx_420BlazeIt]

Websites, mobile-friendly websites.  Websites to shop on.  

 

is there much of a difference between apps and website coding?

 

 

It's for career.  Rather than pay someone to build a website to sell my product on I want to do it myself.  I have a year or so to learn how to code.

 

 

Websites and apps are completely different. Mobile apps are more like desktop applications.

 

 

If you learn the structure of: if statements, for loops, while loops, etc. you should be able to start making simple programs just using documentation for the specific language you have chosen. Maybe buy a book or something? It wouldnt be useful for up to date information, but you would be able to learn the basiscs of the language you choose. Code academy is honestly pointless.

[minimalist]

Websites and apps are completely different. Mobile apps are more like desktop applications.

 

 

If you learn the structure of: if statements, for loops, while loops, etc. you should be able to start making simple programs just using documentation for the specific language you have chosen. Maybe buy a book or something? It wouldnt be useful for up to date information, but you would be able to learn the basiscs of the language you choose. Code academy is honestly pointless.

 

I just spent the last hour on code academy and to be honest I don't feel like I've learned much.  It's great for visuals and to see what things do.  The thing it doesn't really do a good job of is why.  I think it would be good to play around with it when I've learned more but to learn on I'm not so sure it will help me.  

 

Do you have a book to recommend?  I've never trusted those dummies books.  

[scottyboy]

It's for career.  Rather than pay someone to build a website to sell my product on I want to do it myself.  I have a year or so to learn how to code.

 

Get yourself familiar with coding HTML, CSS, Javascript/Jquery with codecademy to learn the basic syntax of the languages. I like it as the live editor shows you what your code is actually doing. Move on from there by getting coding books and using web development websites/blogs. Build yourself up a library of go to sites that you can visit to keep up to date and ask questions (I've got about 70ish websited bookmarked for web development).

 

Coding apps for iOS/Android for your website will involve a considerably greater amount of learning time as you will also have to learn the development process for these systems as well. 

 

Best bet would be to make a mobile friendly version of your website(s) so you don't have to bother with the above.

 

Word of caution about making websites from scratch...If you don't have a good eye for design/usability then it's going to be very difficult to create a decent looking website. I created a database driven website for my final honours project at Uni. I got high praise for the technical functionality of the project but I was marked down for lacking a polished user experience in the design department. 

 

If you're planning on creating multiple websites and making a career out of it then I would go down this route. However if you're wanting to create a website for your own business, I really would not recommend skimping out on a good web designer to create the site for you.. Or use a hosting company like squarespace that allow you to create a decent looking website without having to spend tons of time coding!

[Toxiclegend]

Websites, mobile-friendly websites.  Websites to shop on.  

 

is there much of a difference between apps and website coding?

 

 

It's for career.  Rather than pay someone to build a website to sell my product on I want to do it myself.  I have a year or so to learn how to code.

Check out this this is a quick guide from the mozilla page for mobile web dev. It isn't much but it's a read everything helps.

 

As for apps, you will probably be using either Objective-C or JavaScript (Plus CSS and HTML) depending on the platform I guess. I think if I remember correctly iOS is Objective-C

but I'm pretty sure there is a few dozen other languages that you could use and learn. It's mainly about doing some research and finding out how you want to do things.

 

Web browser wise at work we use PHP, HTML and a few others for the front end atleast but it depends how you want to go about things. If you post your question on Stackoverflow it's full of people who (if you give them enough information on the questions) will answer you and give you a pretty detailed answer.

[minimalist]

Get yourself familiar with coding HTML, CSS, Javascript/Jquery with codecademy to learn the basic syntax of the languages. I like it as the live editor shows you what your code is actually doing. Move on from there by getting coding books and using web development websites/blogs. Build yourself up a library of go to sites that you can visit to keep up to date and ask questions (I've got about 70ish websited bookmarked for web development).

 

Coding apps for iOS/Android for your website will involve a considerably greater amount of learning time as you will also have to learn the development process for these systems as well. 

 

Best bet would be to make a mobile friendly version of your website(s) so you don't have to bother with the above.

 

Word of caution about making websites from scratch...If you don't have a good eye for design/usability then it's going to be very difficult to create a decent looking website. I created a database driven website for my final honours project at Uni. I got high praise for the technical functionality of the project but I was marked down for lacking a polished user experience in the design department. 

 

If you're planning on creating multiple websites and making a career out of it then I would go down this route. However if you're wanting to create a website for your own business, I really would not recommend skimping out on a good web designer to create the site for you.. Or use a hosting company like squarespace that allow you to create a decent looking website without having to spend tons of time coding!

 

I have a year to learn everything and build it.  I know I have a good eye for design/functionality as that's what I went to school for(unrelated to website design unfortunately, but still somewhat relative).  How much that translates into web design I don't know.  Functionality I suspect will be more of a learning curve.  If I feel it's not suitable and ask friends and family to browse it and they find it difficult I'll have to pay someone.  I'd rather save the money and invest it into the product though.  

 

I won't be making a career out of it.  I'd rather at least try to build it.  It's going to be hard enough getting money to start a business. If I can at least try to save some money I'd like to.  

[Toxiclegend]

When I was in school we had to design some sort of search engine for IT, and they wanted us to use Macromedia dreamweave to design it, it's now Adobe dreamweaver, the good thing about this is the fact that you can add everything using the interface no coding required but the real bonus is that if I remember correct it did display the code for it too, so once you got a design you wanted you could look at the code, I believe it was mostly HTML that it showed you but it might help if you download it and design it and read through the coding for it and that way you can easily see what code does what and why it does it like that.

[scottyboy]

I have a year to learn everything and build it.  I know I have a good eye for design/functionality as that's what I went to school for(unrelated to website design unfortunately, but still somewhat relative).  How much that translates into web design I don't know.  Functionality I suspect will be more of a learning curve.  If I feel it's not suitable and ask friends and family to browse it and they find it difficult I'll have to pay someone.  I'd rather save the money and invest it into the product though.  

 

If you have a good eye for design/functionality then you're halfway there for a decent looking website. 

 

For learning the code. Have a look at the top sellers on Amazon for HTML5/CSS3 books and google around for tutorial sites. JavaScript will be a necessity too but I wouldn't bother with any books on this topic as there's are thousands of websites to help you with JS/Jquery tutorials and code snippets.

 

Another thought to consider...These languages will help you build a functional static website. If your website will be accepting orders/have a database of products for customers to browse you may also need to learn some server side programming languages like PHP & MySQL. Again even more to learn! You will have your work cut out for you if you're doing all of this by hand and building the site from scratch.

[minimalist]

When I was in school we had to design some sort of search engine for IT, and they wanted us to use Macromedia dreamweave to design it, it's now Adobe dreamweaver, the good thing about this is the fact that you can add everything using the interface no coding required but the real bonus is that if I remember correct it did display the code for it too, so once you got a design you wanted you could look at the code, I believe it was mostly HTML that it showed you but it might help if you download it and design it and read through the coding for it and that way you can easily see what code does what and why it does it like that.

 

I actually have dreamweaver cs5.5.  I guess that could be an option.

[minimalist]

If you have a good eye for design/functionality then you're halfway there for a decent looking website. 

 

For learning the code. Have a look at the top sellers on Amazon for HTML5/CSS3 books and google around for tutorial sites. JavaScript will be a necessity too but I wouldn't bother with any books on this topic as there's are thousands of websites to help you with JS/Jquery tutorials and code snippets.

 

Another thought to consider...These languages will help you build a functional static website. If your website will be accepting orders/have a database of products for customers to browse you may also need to learn some server side programming languages like PHP & MySQL. Again even more to learn! You will have your work cut out for you if you're doing all of this from by hand and building the site from scratch.

 

Can I cross the server side programming bridge after I build an actual website?  I mean once a website is built can I hire someone to do that part?  I'd like to save some money.  That's the goal.

[Toxiclegend]

Another thought to consider...These languages will help you build a functional static website. If your website will be accepting orders/have a database of products for customers to browse you may also need to learn some server side programming languages like PHP & MySQL. Again even more to learn! You will have your work cut out for you if you're doing all of this from by hand and building the site from scratch.

I agreem MySQL and PHP is used a lot, it's what I used for most of my day to day work. SQL isn't actually too hard to do nor is display the information using PHP. There is also LOADS of threads and sites on the net with these to help.

 

I actually have dreamweaver cs5.5.  I guess that could be an option.

Well like I said I wouldn't use it as your final end product, but it'd really help you understand code structures and layouts.

 

Can I cross the server side programming bridge after I build an actual website?  I mean once a website is built can I hire someone to do that part?  I'd like to save some money.  That's the goal.

I think you would need to set up a basic server side first because if you have anything that requires server storage like, customer information or anything like that you're going to need that. But there is nothing stopping you building a template before the back end stuff is needed.

[scottyboy]

I think you would need to set up a basic server side first because if you have anything that requires server storage like, customer information or anything like that you're going to need that. But there is nothing stopping you building a template before the back end stuff is needed.

 

Agree with Toxiclegend. You could build the front end part of the website that your customers will see then consult a programmer to do the back end stuff for you and help modify your code to work with the server side stuff.

 

Just want to press on the fact that it will be a big undertaking on your part to learn/design/code all of this stuff yourself from scratch. I know you said you have a year to learn and implement your site, just want to let you know what you're in for!

[minimalist]

I agreem MySQL and PHP is used a lot, it's what I used for most of my day to day work. SQL isn't actually too hard to do nor is display the information using PHP. There is also LOADS of threads and sites on the net with these to help.

 

Well like I said I wouldn't use it as your final end product, but it'd really help you understand code structures and layouts.

 

I think you would need to set up a basic server side first because if you have anything that requires server storage like, customer information or anything like that you're going to need that. But there is nothing stopping you building a template before the back end stuff is needed.

 

 

Agree with Toxiclegend. You could build the front end part of the website that your customers will see then consult a programmer to do the back end stuff for you and help modify your code to work with the server side stuff.

 

Just want to press on the fact that it will be a big undertaking on your part to learn/design/code all of this stuff yourself. I know you said you have a year to learn and implement your site, just want to let you know what you're in for!

 

Cool, thanks guys.  I appreciate the help!

[Toxiclegend]

No worries, I'll try and help the best I can, if you get really stuck. If you are not doing anything customer related and are just building a website to show off your business then you shouldn't need anything like MySQL

[scottyboy]

Cool, thanks guys.  I appreciate the help!

 

No problem. Feel free to drop me a message if you have any questions. And good luck on your business! If you don't mind me asking, what are you planning on selling?

[minimalist]

No problem. Feel free to drop me a message if you have any questions. And good luck on your business! If you don't mind me asking, what are you planning on selling?

 

Men's clothing.

[scottyboy]

Men's clothing.

 

Cool. All the best on your site!