Journey to teach myself to code ~Total Newbie ~Zero to Hero.

Hi every one !
I decided to teach myself programming and networking from scratch (I don't have CS degrees I only love programming and Cybersecurity topics + I would like to make some money as a freelancer or whatever)
Requirements :
-Motivation.
-Loving to read books and article and everything readable.

I will base my journey on Head first books series and no starch books because they are great besides I prefer to get information from books over long video lectures !(that is just my opinion I'll probably use both ).
I installed Ubuntu on my computer but I guess I will switch back to Windows lol (I realized I have to read a whole book about Linux and unix command line )

Here is my plan :
I intend to finish these lovely books in 45 days (I read around 100 pages a day + I need some time to apply what I learn too)

Head first Programming _443 pages.
Head first Python _494 pages.
Head first HTML with CSS and XHTML _704 pages .
Head first JavaScript _1003 pages.
Head first PHP and MySQL _814 pages.

Lol I will finish these first and then I will see what's next (probably learn about Networking).

-the journey start tomorrow morning 9 o'clock.
-I will be updating this thread every 2/3 days with what I learn .
I created this thread to keep myself motivated .I hope you guys join the journey too.
-If you have any books recommendations please drop them down in the replying section!
thanks for reading.

Good luck to you mate
I'm actually planning to learn progragraming too
I hope i find success doing it

With my 3year old experience my advice for you is to don't read those books, they have great content. But the place where you will actually learn is by doing. Pick a project that you would like to do, change a LP, make a PHP system, create a simple software for single use. Do it, Google what you don't know, most of the times what you're doing someone has done it before, finish the project REPEAT.

Let's do it together. Anyone with a great course suggestion that explains things in a simple manner?

Awesome, the fact that you love reading books puts you in a very good position.

Instead of "Head first PHP and MySQL" I suggest "Programming PHP". Great book for people new to programming and PHP, it teaches you the core concepts of programming (functions, types, loops, etc) and it was written in collaboration with the guy who designed the first version of PHP (Rasmus Lerdorf).

abcabccuec said:

With my 3year old experience my advice for you is to don't read those books, they have great content. But the place where you will actually learn is by doing. Pick a project that you would like to do, change a LP, make a PHP system, create a simple software for single use. Do it, Google what you don't know, most of the times what you're doing someone has done it before, finish the project REPEAT.

Click to expand...

Exactly this. I barely knew anything about programming when I wrote my first bot, but I just looked up things along the way. You can read all the books in the world, even do the examples, but nothing is like starting a project and just learning as you go. For example, a good first project would be doing a scraper in python and saving it to an sqlite3 database (because it's easier to work with). Also fuck php, you don't need it really beyond knowing how to make simple changes to wordpress themes. Everything it does, something else does better.

Website and app design is its own thing that could take up years of practice as it is. What you have here is a really unfocused, random list and by the end of it you will magically know "programming". I don't feel like that is a good way to learn. You learn the tools you need for the projects you want to accomplish. So you want to build a website? Learn PHP and HTML, right? Well I'd argue no sane person needs to "learn" HTML, most of the concepts you can simply grab a base theme and edit it. But the world is moving away from such strict divides. Nowadays you might learn GatsbyJS to generate static HTML pages with GraphQL queries instead. Or pelican (Python) to do the same thing. Or Flask.

Basically this is a bottomless pot, and until you get some real world experience, all books are gonna do is slow you down. By the time you read a chapter, you could've set up a dev environment and tried 20 different things using online source code and tutorials.

Good luck op!

I myself I just finished learning the fundamentals of python; I'm continuing to CentOS and javascript at the same time.

Afterward, I'm going to learn deep learning using python and image processing.

And I will finish will PHP.

I recommend udemy; they have great courses!

Btw, just like the reply above me, all the courses involve real-life projects for you to learn through.

I love your passion. You're sure to succeed. Check out CodeConquest.

I would recommend a different method, instead of reading 6 books in 45 days, pick one language. Read a book on it, do a course for some practical work. Try to get a good grasp of the language before moving on, otherwise you will struggle to learn. You have time, and this way will be quicker in the long run.

Great journey. Will follow. I would like to learn this too. I tried some web design like HTML and CSS on Codeacademy. It was OK. There is a free trail, though you need to pay after trial ends for more projects.

But I would like to know if there is some place where you can learn more that is good ?

+1 for starting with books.

Yes, you get good and sharpen your problem-solving abilities by actually coding, but having decent primer and being lead through some basic projects from your books will help you avoid a lot of early frustration.

If you're starting from zero, I'd recommend doing the HTML & CSS book first, learn some basic markup language you can start using straight away.

Then move on to PHP/MySQL, as it's very user-friendly and you can leverage it quickly to dynamically create webpages and scripts etc.

Then look at JS/Python for the more advanced perspective.

Good luck man!

JayDee1984 said:

Good luck op!

I myself I just finished learning the fundamentals of python; I'm continuing to CentOS and javascript at the same time.

Afterward, I'm going to learn deep learning using python and image processing.

And I will finish will PHP.

I recommend udemy; they have great courses!

Btw, just like the reply above me, all the courses involve real-life projects for you to learn through.

Click to expand...

I agree. I learned my website programing skills in there.
Also I believe someone recently shared a method to open an edu free Linda account in the forum.
Her courses are also top notch.

Best of luck op


PS: While I admire high end programmers, it is pretty boring to deal with code.
To this days, on huge programs like those who manage College, big companies or Goberment administrations, programmers don't even know what was done before them and just add new code hoping everything goes fine.
.

I don't have a book recommendation, but a subscription video course: Laracasts. They're pretty closely affiliated with the Laravel project and it is to my knowledge the best introduction to an excellent PHP framework.

loveLORD said:

Hi every one !
I decided to teach myself programming and networking from scratch (I don't have CS degrees I only love programming and Cybersecurity topics + I would like to make some money as a freelancer or whatever)
Requirements :
-Motivation.
-Loving to read books and article and everything readable.

I will base my journey on Head first books series and no starch books because they are great besides I prefer to get information from books over long video lectures !(that is just my opinion I'll probably use both ).
I installed Ubuntu on my computer but I guess I will switch back to Windows lol (I realized I have to read a whole book about Linux and unix command line )

Here is my plan :
I intend to finish these lovely books in 45 days (I read around 100 pages a day + I need some time to apply what I learn too)

Head first Programming _443 pages.
Head first Python _494 pages.
Head first HTML with CSS and XHTML _704 pages .
Head first JavaScript _1003 pages.
Head first PHP and MySQL _814 pages.

Lol I will finish these first and then I will see what's next (probably learn about Networking).

-the journey start tomorrow morning 9 o'clock.
-I will be updating this thread every 2/3 days with what I learn .
I created this thread to keep myself motivated .I hope you guys join the journey too.
-If you have any books recommendations please drop them down in the replying section!
thanks for reading.

Click to expand...

If you enjoy studying, enjoy working, enjoy having a pass-time... Programming isn't going to be hard, a burden or hopeless. You're going to get on great man, posting to keep track

Good job OP, I'm also learning myself, and I decided to stick with JavaScript till I build my first project with it. I use Udemy and Youtube to learn as books don't cut it for me.

Harlet said:

Also fuck php, you don't need it really beyond knowing how to make simple changes to wordpress themes. Everything it does, something else does better.
.

Click to expand...

You could not be more wrong. My six years of experience have taught me that you should use the right tool for the job, and a lot of times, PHP does it better than any other language.

Fortunately, on the server depending on the project, you get to choose your environment, unlike on the client (web) where you have no other option than to use JavaScript.

rafark said:

You could not be more wrong. My six years of experience have taught me that you should use the right tool for the job, and a lot of times, PHP does it better than any other language.

Fortunately, on the server depending on the project, you get to choose your environment, unlike on the client (web) where you have no other option than to use JavaScript.

Click to expand...

PhP has been on the decline for years now. I do everything from web development to machine learning. I can think of almost nothing I use it for anymore, and when I do I am reminded of why no one wants to use it anymore. Yet there are always the php fanboys frothing to defend it. Not saying you are, but there is a passionate fanbase there for a half dead language. Laravel is about the only thing keeping it afloat in modern development. If you are starting from scratch, it is so much better to go with demand and more flexible languages.

Head first Programming _443 pages.
Head first Python _494 pages.
Head first HTML with CSS and XHTML _704 pages .
Head first JavaScript _1003 pages.
Head first PHP and MySQL _814 pages.

Click to expand...

Your approach is wrong bro.

Firstly - you need to choose language. In your set there is book about python and php, either stick to python or php. I advise python as you can make way more with python and python on university is often used as introductory language.

Lets say you want to go for python.....
You need one book about python, either first from your set or automate the boring stuff with python.
When you will read this book - start to code, after finishing this book also code as much as you can.

If you are interested in web dev - learn about django and flask, read about sql - sqlite, mysql or postgresql (I would go for postgresql).
When learning about django you will also need to learn about some frontend solutions including JS. Touch javascript only when you dig alot in python, JS is for many people harder. If you start with python first JS will be easier for you later.

When you feel you are really good at python take a look at other coding languages but as long as you are newbie - stick to one.

I second this, this is the most realistic advice you can get to become a good programmer for now and later.

Harlet said:

PhP has been on the decline for years now. I do everything from web development to machine learning. I can think of almost nothing I use it for anymore, and when I do I am reminded of why no one wants to use it anymore. Yet there are always the php fanboys frothing to defend it. Not saying you are, but there is a passionate fanbase there for a half dead language. Laravel is about the only thing keeping it afloat in modern development. If you are starting from scratch, it is so much better to go with demand and more flexible languages.

Click to expand...

GL op!
I also wanna learn coding myself!
Will start with some good YT channel