4 BEST Tips For How To Learn Coding For Beginners

so you're stuck and look I get it it's frustrating and I promise you I understand because I see it almost every day engaging in conversations online exchanging comments and things like that but you're trying to get started with programming and you're kind of at a road block because you're right at the beginning and you're just not sure what to do next so first of all I just wanted to say that you're already doing the right thing taking a first step trying to look at some videos and stuff online just like this one right now and and a lot of people don't even get that far because they self- sabotage and don't even get started so just a quick reminder to yourself good job for getting started because like I said a lot of people don't even take that first step so this video is absolutely intended for beginner programmers and I'm going to try to give you some tips with getting started with programming so from what I've experienced from engaging with people online in conversations is that a lot of people focus on like the language they need to start with right you spend so much time trying to ask around like what's the best language how do I know like if I should pick python or C or C++ or Java or C there's tons of languages and the more you ask around the more answers you get you might start to see themes like people saying well if you start with python it's the easiest language right um I'm not making claims here just what I hear people saying all the time or you I've seen people say start with c and C++ and I think their motivation is because you can focus on just like like basic programming principles like some of your um you know algorithms and data structures and stuff like that but I think that's the wrong place to start and I think that's the wrong place to start because in my opinion when people are asking the question what language should I start with the answers that I see are almost always just people's opinions right like I like using C A lot and if I were the typical person online and someone came to me and said hey what language should I start with I'm going to say C because I think it's awesome I use it for almost everything why wouldn't I tell someone to use a language that I'm really familiar with so I think it's the wrong place to get started I think it's an early thing you want to figure out but I think there's a step that you want to take before that so if you've been stuck trying to pick that first language asking around getting all these answers I hope this part is what's going to help you progress to there so when people ask me what language should I start with I always ask them back one question and that is what do you want to build right because when people ask me what language they should start with the reality is I can't give them a good answer unless they know more about what they want to do so to give you some examples of what this could look like if someone answered back my question and said well I really just want to like learn some programming Concepts right I don't even think I want to build anything I just want to be familiar with it then I might say something like python or something just really simple to read might be great right you can reduce the load like the cognitive load about having to figure out the language and the syntax and the tooling and just work with something super simple super readable other people you know the opinions about CM C++ like they might say well you can just focus on like literally basics of the language and that might be really good for you to just kind of play around with some programming Concepts a lot of different opinions right but you might structure the answer to that question about what language and direct it really just around being simple and straightforward right restrict all the other things you're not looking about you know what platform it can work on and how widely used it is no one cares in that case if you just want to learn some programming Concepts and get familiar with it now if someone said I want to make you know mobile applications I want to make websites or I want to make video games or whatever right the answers start to to change I'm not going to go listing out all of the languages and what I think they're optimized for there are tons of resources online with a quick search that can help guide you in that direction so for example if you wanted to build websites you could do a quick search online and just say like programming languages or uh programming languages and Frameworks for building websites and you'd get a lot of ideas you'd see a bunch of examples you see a lot of JavaScript typescript you'd see react you'd see angular you'd start to see these keywords coming up a lot and that might put you in the right direction to start looking at different programming languages and Frameworks that you can use so I hope you can already see that if someone answered to you and said oh just use Python because I love python or just use Java because I love Java and then you went to go build a website and you wanted to start searching that and you're looking online you might feel like you're trapped a little bit right like okay I have to find Java and I have to find website stuff and it's uh why I'm searching Java and I'm only seeing JavaScript like what's going on here like you're not picking a language that's necessarily tailored to the use case yes you can build websites with either of those things but what you're going to run into are probably a lot of other things that are a little bit more you know better suited for doing that so your first step before jumping into picking the programming language is trying to figure out what you want to do with programming so if you want to go around asking this question to try getting some insight I highly recommend you lead with hey I would like to go accomplish X whatever that is just learn the basics I'd like to build websites I'd love to build servers whatever I'd like to build the thing I'd like to do the thing could you please recommend some programming languages for me on top of that I I think if you want to add into that question if you're asking around if you're on Reddit or Facebook or wherever if you're asking that try to offer up other suggestions you've seen already right try to do some of that research yourself and I think that will help you get a lot better answers if you're asking around and you can demonstrate to others like I've seen a couple of these things can you help elaborate on them and explain to me if I'm on the right path so step one try to figure out what you want to do with programming step two is then trying to identify that programming language and framework that you're going to be using now your journey from this point on compared to someone else could look completely different based on what you're trying to do for the person that really just wanted to work on you know different programming Concepts like some fundamentals just to get introduced to it they might use an like an online compiler right they could sit there in a browser play around with some code looking at you know just articles online explain like here's how you would Loop through an array like really simple stuff here's how this algorithm Works here's how stacks and cues work you could spend a lot of time doing that however if your goal is truly just to jump into building things I've seen a lot of people have success just kind of skip some of those early steps and I'm not saying this works well for everyone but they skip some of the really primitive things and they start looking at code and Frameworks that are already working they start with really simple examples and they go hey here's code for a website I have no idea what it does right and I wouldn't expect anyone to if you've never done it before but they get it they're like researching how they can get it running now all of a sudden they have this website running on their computer and they go cool well I see this text and I see this text in the code I'm going to change that I see this button on the on the website and I see that when I click it it's doing this thing and they start EXP exploring and kind of working with code your journey could look like that in fact just to give you an example of how well this works when I kicked off this Channel at the beginning of 2023 I had a close friend from high school that was trying to help out with some video editing he was self-proclaimed not a programmer didn't want to say that he knew anything about programming and he was right he had never taken any official like courses or anything on programming he had no idea about the basics and fundamental of writing code data structures algorithms but you know what he's actually having no problem at all putting programs together now why because he ended up taking the approach that worked for him starting with some website starting with some other code that he saw getting it from other sources playing around with it and learning by being Hands-On so where I'm going with this is after you pick the language and the framework you want to use how you try to learn most effectively for you is is going to be very individual so when you start having other people tell you this is the best way to do it right like you need to go take a boot camp you need to go watch all of these videos online you need to go buy this book all of that kind of stuff is someone directing you how to learn best I'm a little bit guilty of this because I think the best way to learn is doing Hands-On stuff and building projects and I recommend this because I think most people are in fact trying to get to to a point where they're building software and not just focused on the theoretical learning aspects however I could be totally wrong and if I was telling people to just go build projects and they said look I don't care about making websites and mobile applications I really just wanted to have some understanding about programming then my direction that I would tell them to go in is actually kind of misleading so I think this step which is part three is really critical for you which is understanding how you learn best and that might mean trying a few things if you don't already know right you're already on YouTube watching this video so you might be inclined to watch videos and learn that way if that's the case feel free to subscribe to this channel cuz I'm hopeful that I can help you in your journey in programming if you find that reading is most effective I have a website and lots of articles there you might want to check that out too now aside from all the shameful plugging the point of this is that you have to figure out how you learn best there's lots of amazing aming content creators making videos posting articles there are tons of books that you could go look at if that's most effective for you and if you're interested in building projects which is what I personally recommend there are lots of opportunities for you to pick really simple things to start with or take more complicated things break them down into smaller pieces and just try building something after you've figured out this for yourself the next part is investing time and this is going to be the the last part that I touch on for this video but I think it's really important if you came to this video hoping that I was going to share some secrets about the absolute best shortcut to go be an expert coder in two weeks or something like that um you know here like I'm going to put a link and go buy this course and after four weeks you'll be the best programmer in the world I hate to disappoint you it does not work that way now some people do learn faster than others some people learn slower people learn differently that's not the point I'm trying to make the point that I'm trying to make is that there's a lot of information online that I feel like is misleading people that want to get into programming that if they pay for something they will automatically reach like expert status in a very short amount of time the reality is programming is just like any other skill that you're trying to build if you wanted to be a basketball player and I said hey just pay me a hundred bucks and in two weeks I can make you the best basketball player in the world that's going to be very misleading right you're going to need to spend a lot of time training and playing basketball to be really good that was a pretty random example because I'm absolutely terrible at basketball but if I used a better example and said hey look I could make you really strong at squatting and bench pressing because that's what I'm into I couldn't promise you that no matter how much money you paid me that in a couple of weeks you'd be able to do an amazing job at it I've been doing that kind of stuff for 20 years now and I'm still kind of mediocre at it I like to think I'm pretty good but I have a long way to go still and programming is no different right I've been programming just as long as I've been going to the gym I've been doing it for about 20 years now and I'm still learning things when I'm programming do I consider myself an expert in some things I feel like I'm pretty good in other things I have a ton to learn and I think that it's really important just to remind yourself that everything that we're trying to get good at takes time time and you need to invest that time in practice so that you can get better now I don't want you to interpret what I just said as paying for resources is not going to help you that's not the point I'm trying to make in fact I think that you can pay for resources and they absolutely can help you I just want to set realistic expectations for you so that you don't get disappointed if you're not getting the progress that you're expecting to get just for paying for things so using the other examples I was talking about if you had a basketball coach yes paying for a basketball coach could absolutely help if you wanted to pay for a personal trainer to help you with your Squat and your bench press yes absolutely that could help and paying for courses paying for mentoring paying for boot camps whatever it happens to be books all of that kind of stuff could absolutely help you with getting better at programming but none of those things no matter how much money you spend are going to shortcut all of the work that you need to do to truly become an expert so don't let that discourage you because programming is absolutely a journey technolog is always changing in fact this year alone from trying to put content together it's forced me to actually go relearn a lot of stuff in C and the net ecosystem that I just kind of took for granted but it's evolved so much in the 15 years or so that I've been using it that if I don't go relearn some things I can't make content effectively so instead of being discouraged by like having to learn things and having to spend time try to flip that scenario around right like you have a lot of opportunity and a lot of really cool things to learn and there's always going to be more really cool things you can learn and apply in the things that you're trying to build okay to wrap this video up what was step one well step one is not picking a programming language step one is trying to think about what you want to do with programming from there you can better answer the question of what programming language do you start with the third part that I discussed was now that you have that programming language picked and you have an idea the direction you want to head for building things or how you want to apply programming is figuring out the best way that you learn you might know this already you might have to spend some time trying some different things out and the final step was that understanding that you're going to have to actually spend time invest that time and practice to get better at programming so congrats again on taking some of your first steps with getting started with programming because like I said in the very beginning of this video a lot of people self sabotage and they don't get this far they feel like they're not good at math they're not smart enough whatever other excuse and they go too bad I'll never be a programmer but here you are watching this video and trying to make your progress right in the beginning so I hope that you found this helpful I'm excited for you to to start your journey and I'm hopeful that if you enjoy this kind of content you can subscribe and find my other videos helpful in the journey that you're just starting on thanks so much and we'll see you next time