Since starting my self-learning journey I have always asked and wondered what is the best programming language to learn or which should I start with. Many people wonder and ask which one guarantees a job. Which will get them into Google or any of the FAANG companies.
I do not have a computer science degree so I did not know what programming was I just assumed I learned a programming language and I would be a programmer. But oh boy was I wrong.
Programming languages are nothing but a tool. A programming language is to a programmer what a hammer is to a construction worker or a good knife is to a chef. Something that I have learned from other programmers that I follow, articles and books is that in order to be a good programmer one must be a problem solver.
You do not need to know a specific programming language to be a great programmer. You need to know what programming language to use and when to use them depending on the problem that you have.
We always hear programmers, developers, software engineers talk about bugs; and what are bugs? They are problems that they encounter in their code, their software, etc. Knowing what language, framework, library to use to fix the bug is what people hire you to do.
When you are working with a client and they ask for a website. They need a website for a reason. Maybe they are not getting enough clients, they are not making enough sales. These are problems that they have. As a programmer you need to think: “How can I fix these problems?” Once you know how to fix the problem and the steps you need to take (pseudo code) you can choose a programming language or framework that will help you fix the problem.
But where do you start?
If you are interested in programming or coding in general I suggest you think about what type of problems you want to fix. Do you want to help people gain more clients by creating websites? Do you want to fix a problem in your community with a mobile app? Do you like data and structure? There are many career paths within tech.
Make a list of all the things you like doing or that you liked doing when you were younger. Look for similar roles within the tech industry then look up which programming language is typically used within that specific role. You will then have a starting point. The more you learn and progress the more you will discover and add to your “Need to learn” list.
One last point to keep in mind is that a programmer is a life-long learner. You will always be learning new skills and tech stacks. Once you learn your 1st language, and get over that hurdle the rest will not be such a struggle.
This post is episode 2 of my #SelfTaughtSaturday Series where I will be posting tips, tricks, resources, anything and everything that can hopefully help anyone out there interested in self-learning to code.
If you are even a bit intrigued and are interested in learning to code lets connect! I would love to help in any way I can.
Photo by Windows on Unsplash
Top comments (4)
I see that you are learning JavaScript. What resources are you using to learn JavaScript? Just curious.
I'm learning Go -- reading this book : The Go Programming Language I run Ubuntu 20.04 and it allows you to quickly write command line tools and make them executable and shareable.
I am using freecodecamp, youtube, sololearn, and eloquent javascript. I find that a mix of sources keeps the process going.
I like to use a mix of sources to learn also. I like reading books for learning the most though to get enough depth on the subject. But I liked to read multiple books on a subject at the same time.
I love that you make a point to say figure out what you like doing. If you want to create for the web JS is a great idea. If you think you want to get into machine learning or AI go for Python. If like the commenter below and you like making command line tools Go is awesome for that. If you want to do IOS choose swift, android Kotlin. There is so much hype and buzz around languages and frameworks but honestly, if you are not interested it is going to be that much harder to learn.