I am relatively new to coding and am looking for ways to break into the industry. My main questions are what are the most important things I need to learn, and how can I learn them? Is freeCodeCamp’s Responsive Web Design course a good start? and really what is the best way to learn more? Thanks in advance!
I am relatively new to coding and am looking for ways to break into the industry.
The first step is to learn to code. Get good at coding. Make sure you enjoy it.
Is freeCodeCamp’s Responsive Web Design course a good start?
Sure, it’s a good start. The first 6 FCC certificates give you a solid base for a MERN stack, a marketable tech stack.
Is it “the best”? First of all, that depends on what you want to do. If you want to do web dev, then it’s a great start. You finish those and then spend some time continuing your learning and building increasingly complex portfolio projects, then you’ve got a good chance at getting a job. The more you learn and build, the better the odds.
But if you don’t want to do web dev, then this isn’t a great place to start.
If you are still young, I might suggest getting a degree. It can be done without a CS degree (at least I did) but having a degree would have been better.
Just keep learning and building things. That’s the most important thing.
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First of all, ask yourself why do you want to learn programming i.e in which domain do you want to work.
Then try to learn the “C” language, because it is the basic programming language if you are comfortable with the C programming go ahead and learn the most trending topics like Data Science, Machine learning, Artificial intelligence, cyber security, Blockchain etc….
Tips:
- Choose the right programming language.
- Try out some online courses.
- Focus on learning computational thinking.
- Get a book.
- Check out some interactive tutorials
I don’t agree with this. Don’t get me wrong - C is a great language. It was the first “real” programming language I learned. But implying that someone needs to learn C if they (for example) want to learn web dev would be like telling someone that they need to learn Latin if they want to learn French. There may be situations where you definitely need to learn Latin, but learning French isn’t one of them. Would it help? Probably a little, but not proportionally to the amount of time it would take.
This is the forum site for people learning web dev. Learning C would have little to no value in learning web dev, about as much as learning Latin would help someone learning French.
I would be very careful about thinking that any particular language is some kind of a catholicon. They each have their strengths and weaknesses and areas where they are useful and areas where they are useless.
C in particular, I question if it has incredible job prospects. If you look at that list, C doesn’t even make it. True, C# and C++ are decedents of C, but so is JavaScript and Java. If you want to work on operating systems and other low-level applications, where memory and speed are a premium, then C is a great language. But year after year, as memory and speed keep getting cheaper, it becomes less important. If someone told me they wanted to learn C, I would ask, “Why?”. Not as a confrontation, but just to clarify because there are a lot of dev jobs where that isn’t going to do much good.
Don’t get me wrong - it’s a great language. I learned a lot from it. It forces you to really understand a lot of low level concepts that are hidden in a lot of modern languages.
Figure out what you want to do, figure out what you need to learn, and learn. If you can’t decide, just pick something and start learning. But also be a little wary of people pushing their own pet languages/frameworks/libraries, etc. and pushing them as some panacea. There is a lot of that out there.
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C was my fourth language, after GW-BASIC, ADA and LISP. Sounds like a Jeopardy question, for which the answer is, “What are languages found in the museum of computer history?”
C is a great language, for what it is. As a “first language” in the modern sphere, it seems less likely t to be something I’d recommend.
I’d start by asking myself, “what am i curious about?” If i want to learn to control sensors and servos, there are languages that excel at that. If i want to learn data analysis, another set. Web dev (largely what freecodecamp works toward), something else.
Interested in databases? Curious about hardware/firmware? Game dev? CGI? Each choice narrows the focus some. But right now, any option is a good start.
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