Any good programming from scratch tutorial for someone with little amount of patience?

[Filingo]

Hello,

 

I wanted to help my friend get started with programming so I sent him link to one of the Coursera Python specializations, but it wasn't for him as it's more slow paced (I think?) and he has got no much patience.

The Coursera courses are more similar to the CS introduction courses on a university.

 

So maybe there is something more suitable for him? That will get to the "interesting" parts faster?

 

It needs to be completely from scratch, so something about the basic of programming, not specific language.

 

Do you know of some good course that fits? Maybe one of those full, few hours long courses on YouTube? And, do you recommend a specific language?

 

Thanks

 

[YoungBlade]

What does your friend want to do with programming? It's sort of like saying he wants to get into writing - there's endless possibilities of what you can learn and do. And it could be that your friend is only interested in doing things that feel like they are immediately progressing towards his actual goals.

 

The "interesting" part for me has always been writing code that makes stuff happen, but I was interested in even very basic things like being able to input a word and having it spit out the word in reverse. And Python is a great language for that because, after you get it set up, you can code up programs like that in just a few lines.

 

Most Python courses I know take advantage of this fact and have the learner start doing things from the very first lesson, to show them that they can make things happen. So unless this course was particularly dry and started with a history lesson about Python and started explaining different types of programming techniques and whatnot, I imagine they got to what I would consider the "interesting" part within 30 minutes to an hour, of having him write a basic program.

[kenkku]

I will probably get chastised by others in the field, but in my opinion, Javascript is an excellent starting point. Its strongest advantage, again IMO, is instant gratification. Every computer runs JS, and you don't need any special tools for it besides a browser and a text editor. Granted, one of the major downsides is that concepts present in other languages like garbage collection and static typing may be a little difficult to get used to if you decide to switch. However, I still think JS will be great for learning the concepts.

[YoungBlade]

29 minutes ago, kenkku said:

I will probably get chastised by others in the field, but in my opinion, Javascript is an excellent starting point. Its strongest advantage, again IMO, is instant gratification. Every computer runs JS, and you don't need any special tools for it besides a browser and a text editor. Granted, one of the major downsides is that concepts present in other languages like garbage collection and static typing may be a little difficult to get used to if you decide to switch. However, I still think JS will be great for learning the concepts.

I don't see why learning JS first would be a problem. In some ways, it's very similar to Python.

 

My biggest criticism of the idea is that, generally, you wouldn't use just JS in practice, but would also use HTML and CSS (and possibly PHP, Python, or Perl, too) when it comes time to actually do projects in the real world. So a JS course is often going to either assume you already know some basic HTML, or is going to go off on a tangent about that for a while, which could feel overwhelming, like you need to learn multiple languages instead of just one. Whereas Python, while it can be used in conjunction with other code, is also often used for standalone projects.

 

However, for just starting out, I don't think this is a big problem, as there's no reason you couldn't do effectively pure JS and just treat the minimal HTML required for it as a black box to make things work - sort of like how in many Java courses the meaning of "public static void main(String[] args)" is just ignored until later on.

[kenkku]

3 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

I don't see why learning JS first would be a problem. In some ways, it's very similar to Python.

 

My biggest criticism of the idea is that, generally, you wouldn't use just JS in practice, but would also use HTML and CSS (and possibly PHP, Python, or Perl, too) when it comes time to actually do projects in the real world. So a JS course is often going to either assume you already know some basic HTML, or is going to go off on a tangent about that for a while, which could feel overwhelming, like you need to learn multiple languages instead of just one. Whereas Python, while it can be used in conjunction with other code, is also often used for standalone projects.

 

However, for just starting out, I don't think this is a big problem, as there's no reason you couldn't do effectively pure JS and just treat the minimal HTML required for it as a black box to make things work - sort of like how in many Java courses the meaning of "public static void main(String[] args)" is just ignored until later on.

I absolutely agree. I myself started out with PHP but its JS that made me want to look into programming and got me excited to learn stuff. But at that point it was NodeJS specifically, and I learned the general front-end stuff way after.

[Filingo]

thanks guys, 

He doesn't have specific purpose yet, but I was thinking to first get him to know the fundamentals of programming and get him to understand the basics to see if he even likes it. 

 

But I don't want something specific for example "web development" or "gaming development", so the language doesn't matter (as long as it's at least a C-based language and not something like assembly  )

 

So it should have the basic learning of programming i.e. variables, loops, (recursion?)

 

Do you of someone on YouTube that has something like that?

[Avocado Diaboli]

Getting to the interesting bits won't help him if he isn't interested in the fundamentals. It'll only lead him to asking silly questions later on and struggling with more complex things (trust me, I know, I've been there). We've had a few of those people on this forum, asking very basic and fundamental questions about programming that should be obvious if you haven't just skipped around tutorials and never actually focused on learning something.

 

The most important thing to learn when you want to start programming is solving problems, not writing code. If you aren't able to distill information and find solutions efficiently, you'll never be a good programmer, no matter how much you try to learn languages. And courses tend to not teach you those skills. They teach you how to wield the hammer, so to speak, but they often don't teach you the intuition of where to apply the hammer or where a different tool might be more useful instead.

 

Make him watch this, it's engaging enough to not be an absolute slog like so many beginner courses are. If he doesn't have patience, speed up the video.