Hi, I'm glad to begin my blogging journey with you today. If you are reading this, I guess you are new to programming and don't know how to wrap your head around all the overwhelming world of being a programmer - you don't know where to start. Not to worry, I'm here to help you.
Today, I will give you some guides that will help you along your journey as a developer and share some of my experiences along the way.
Lets Get Started
Learning to code can be confusing at first. It's like going to a place for the first time and you don't know how to navigate your newly found environment. You could ask questions along the way or just choose to learn the environment yourself. Either way, you still need to learn your new environment as quick as possible so you won't get lost.
What path do I take?
Starting out can be overwhelming, you don't know what language to learn either JavaScript, Java, Swift, Go, Dart, PHP etc. Picking a language can be confusing but when you understand exactly what you want to do, you discover that it's not rocket science. From my experience, I usually advice code newbies to start with the easiest language possible, learn HTML and CSS, then you can advance to other complex languages.
Also understanding exactly what you want to to will help you make your decision faster.
- If you want to become a Web Developer, I will advice you to learn JavaScript. Learning JavaScript will come in very handy for you, as JavaScript has grown over the years and it's popularity has also grown with it. Not only can you use JavaScript for both Front-End and Back-End Development of your web application, your can also use JavaScript to build Mobile Apps, Desktop Applications and even for Machine Learning.
- If you want to go into Data Science/Machine Learning, Python is the language you need to learn. Python is also one of the fastest growing programming languages out there. It can also be used for Web development.
- If you want to become an Mobile App Developer, depending on the platform you want to build for, will depend which language to learn. If you want to build for Android platform, you might need to learn Java. If you want to build for IOS platform, you need to learn Swift. Being a cross developer programmer might involve you learning the two(2) languages. But there is good news, you don't have to learn two languages to developed applications for both Android and IOS platform, you can learn to build an Hybrid Application which is what most developers used. You won't need to have two code base for both platform, you can build on a single code base and run your application on the two(2) platforms. Then, you might need to learn Flutter (developed by Google) or React-Native (developed by Facebook) to build these applications.
So, the languages to learn is solely dependent on what you intend to achieve at the end of the day.
Don't give up along the way
When I started my journey as a developer, so many times I would have given up because the truth is that it is not so easy. If you are a self-taught developer, you will understand what it means to fail and to put up your bed again. Failure is always part of the journey. Don't believe the lie that you can be a perfect developer, you fail to learn but you can also reduce the rate at which you fail, that's why I am taking you through this guide. Another thing that also frustrated me was the fact that I thought I was not growing or that the speed at which I am growing is just too slow.....
No!!! That's not true.
Don't get carried away, follow your pace
Don't be carried away by what you see other developers doing or building, everyone has their pace of learning. If you are a slow learner, keep at it, just keep learning, just keep going. In the nearest future, you will thank your stars you did.
But! Consistency is KEY
The Key to being good at anything is CONSISTENCY. You may not have all the time in the world, but at least decide to code even if it's 20 minutes everyday. When you code for 20 minutes a day for a week, that's about 140 minutes (whoa). You might not know it but you are growing a lot. It is better to code for 20 minutes everyday than to code for just 4 hours once a week.
In Conclusion
Everyone uses Google - even developers at Google.
No body is an island of knowledge, learn to ask for help, learn to use Google, learn to read documentations. To master any language, don't be caught in the web of tutorials, Learn by Doing. Don't just watch tutorials, build stuffs, just be building, just be coding.
I hope you enjoyed reading this article.
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