What Is The Best (and Free) Way To Learn Programming as a Beginner?

[Muhlis]

Hi,

 

I got interested about programming these days and I don't know anything about programming, at all. But I want to learn about it. I think I want to start by learning mobile (app) development or web programming. What is the best way to start learning to coding/programming?

 

For example, recently I heard about Flutter. Is it a good platform to start learning how to programming?

 

Any advice would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Origami Cactus]

Just start coding.

Think of something you want to create, and then start to search for tutorials on that thing.

But if you a beginner, then sites like codeacadamy etc can help you to get you on your feet. Haven't heard of flutter, but probably fine.

[Levent]

Getting in on a relatively new programming language is not easy. Flutter is one of those. I am not saying you cant learn it, it just takes a bit longer and finding answers may not be easy especially all alone. Something like React Native is what I would recommend, if front-end is not your thing look at Java or .NET.

[DefinitelyRus]

Based on what limited experience I have, I would suggest starting to learn programming concepts first, even just the very basics. Then make a really basic mini-project just to test what you already know. One good project I often suggest is a basic login system where the program will close when the user fails to login for the 3rd time. This project can be done in many many ways and can easily be improved on over time. It can make use of IF-ELSEs, loops, variables, inputs & outputs, and so on, but not all of them are necessarily required. The point is to get a hang of the concepts, and this project in particular is both easy to grasp and very versatile - you can even complete it only using IF-ELSE statements and input/outputs.

 

As Levent said, I wouldn't recommend jumping onto new languages myself either. For your purposes, JavaScript is a great start for web development. C# .NET is good for mobile development, although it does have a steeper learning curve than basic web development. That said, nothing's stopping you from using Flutter!

 

As for where to start, I don't have any recommendations for learning resources for Flutter unfortunately. I don't want to recommend something at random only to find out it's a bad learning material. For JavaScript, W3Schools' JS tutorial is pretty good in my opinion. If you want a video tutorial series, I highly recommend Caleb Curry's JavaScript series. Same for C#. Here's the W3Schools one, and here's the video series. though this doesn't feature .NET, so here's the official Youtube guide for .NET instead.

 

I'm sure someone out there have better suggestions than what I gave you here, but these worked for me and I personally recommend them. Good luck on your programming journey!

 

[Muhlis]

Thanks a lot guys for your helpful suggestions. Then I think I'm going to learn JavaScript first. Even Flutter uses JavaScript as its language. 

[Dat Guy]

On 5/6/2022 at 8:09 PM, Muhlis said:

For example, recently I heard about Flutter. Is it a good platform to start learning how to programming?

 

Flutter is a Google project. Google tends to just stop continuing its projects - it's been 267 as we speak:

https://killedbygoogle.com

 

For web and mobile development, different languages have different strengths. In recent months, I've come to the conclusion that Go is a pretty solid web development language.

But yes, Flutter is rather good for mobile development - as long as it's continued.

 

18 hours ago, Muhlis said:

Even Flutter uses JavaScript as its language. 

 

Flutter uses Dart as its language. The browser-facing parts need to be in JavaScript though, as web browsers don't (fully) support other languages for interactive content just yet.

[Ababba]

One thing about web development is every week there is a new 'best' framework platform to use library to use.

 

If you are serious about learning web development start with the basics of JavaScript/HTML/CSS. Then you can start to add on higher level languages like TypeScript/SCSS that can make development easier. Those compile into JavaScript and CSS>

 

If you goal is to create a product, and quickly, then use a really popular framework like React as it will have a lot of search results to figure out how to do things. (I like VueJS myself).

 

If your goal is to create a mobile app, then web apps are a great way to go as they can be turned into mobile apps using things like Cordova while also not requiring you to learn both Android and iOS platforms and maintain two separate apps. That downside being that they may not perform as well, but on modern phone hardware, it's usually not really a problem.

[Ultraforce]

Depending on what you might be able to acccess from a library I find that the Linkedin Learning courses are okay. The Javascript one probably wouldn't be everyone's favourite since it uses Microsoft Visual Studio Code and recommends extensions, so it's not the purist way of coding. But it talks about and gives examples to practice a lot of the major concepts you would need to know just in general for web development.

[bit_by_bit]

Computer science major here. Having once been in your position, I want to try and offer some clarification. "How do I learn programming" is a really vague question to try to answer, and (in my experience) you will get a lot similarly vague and often conflicting responses. Realistically speaking, how you learn programming should be defined by you end goal. What was it that got you "interested about programming"? If you just have an idea for an app or website, JavaScript probably isn't a bad place to start. If, however, you want to really learn about programming and about computers, then web and app development is not really the place to start. In that case, I would personally recommend you jump into C++. It is certainly more intimidating to start, and you probably won't running any project outside a terminal widow for a while, but I think that the fundamental skill and knowledge you gain leaning C++ are more valuable than learning any single language. Additionally, C++ is a long lived, very widely used language with excellent documentation and a ton of resources. Once you have learned a couple languages, learning a new one is just tedious, but no amount of syntax knowledge can replace the ability the think like a programmer. If want to share you thoughts on which direction you might want to go, I can try to offer up some resources.

 

No matter what though, best of luck and have fun!

[AdjectiveMoose]

Honestly depends on the person.

 

For most people, and once you find a language that you think would be best for said project, I think its best to just delve into a project idea and try to follow a tutorial that is related to the project idea. Try not to fall into the pitfall of just following the tutorial, and instead look at the documentation and tinker around with the code a bit.

 

I had a couple of friends really enjoy the programming challenges of LeetCode, and the more beginner friendly CodingBat. It'll get you up to speed with most of the general programming paradigms (i.e. utilizing common data structures and algorithms).

 

No matter what, just do and have fun with it.