November 2020 - Hello World

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I am new to programming and I am enjoying my introduction to freeCodeCamp.org.

I took one or two introductory “Computer Science” classes in high school. Even though I was interested in the subject matter, I didn’t find the purely academic approach to coding very interesting. In fact, I think I may have even dropped the high school class part way through. It just seemed like the class was taking something that was exciting and full of potential and sucking the life out of it.

I’ve considered revisiting coding and programming a few times. The friends I knew who were software engineers or developers generally discouraged me from pursuing it, with the advice that unless I had been avidly pursuing coding from a young age on my own, I would not likely find the field very interesting. Advice of this sort only validated the previous experiences I had with Computer Science in college and high school.

In recent years, coding boot camps have come into vogue but they have always been cost prohibitive, so I haven’t pursued them as an option. I’ve had more than a passing interest in learning Python, but I haven’t really done anything about it.

Recently, I listened to a podcast, where the guest suggested learning Assembly, C++ and Python. Last weekend, I spent several hours fooling around with MS Visual Studio, trying to get the various plug-ins to work for Assembly and then finally abandoned it. This weekend, I spoke with another friend who is a Software Engineer and he encouraged me to forego Assembly and jump right in with Python, which is what lead me to freeCodeCamp.

Yesterday, I finished the first hour of “Learn Python - Full Course for Beginners”. Today, I created free accounts with GitHub, StackOverflow and freeCodeCamp. FreeCodeCamp has encouraged me to start from the beginning, so today I completed the intro to HTML / HTML5.

At this point, I’m more or less trusting freeCodeCamp.org that I’m better off starting from the beginning, than continuing down the “Learn Python” track. My assumption is that after following the advice to start from the beginning, I will eventually return to the “Learn Python” track again in the future.

I suppose I have two questions:

  1. If my end goal is to learn Python, is starting from the beginning really the best approach?

  2. Is this this forum intended to be used as a blog or are there other options that are more suited to blogging my coding journey?

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Hey there @pythonsparrow,

First lets answer your questions…

It all depends. If you want to learn web designing, you probably want to start from the beginning, but if you want to use python as a computer science programming, no I suggest you to start right to the computer science section.

That’s why sections in the FCC Curriculum exists, so if someone already have a goal or knowledge in a specific section, or just isn’t interested in it, then they can skip it. You learn what you want to teach yourself. Freecodecamp is a tool for your learning. It has helped me and it will help you if you have the commitment.

The forum is intended for users to ask questions and get help about their journey learning coding. Sometimes, people will come into the forums and celebrate about what they do.

The community in the forums will definitely help you for you to be able to learn coding. If you really want to blog about coding, you can consider being a writer for the FCC news: freeCodeCamp Programming Tutorials: Python, JavaScript, Git & More

You will find not just blogs, but news about coding or anything related to technology. You can also find tutorials and/or guide. You can try to ask the be a writer for FCC.

Here’s just a nice little tip:
If you’re really passionate about something, there is NO such thing as TOO late.
Just make sure you put time and effort to it, and anything is possible.

Have a great day and happy coding!

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Hey there @Catalactics! Thank you kindly for your detailed, helpful and thoughtful reply to my post. Have a great week! Happy coding to you as well.

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A few months later, this is such a meaningful, thoughtful and thorough response from @Catalactics !

Thanks again for taking the time to read through and address each of my questions in such a positive and encouraging way!