I have completely taken for granted that I have learned programming throughout my education and now have no idea where I would guide somebody to learn programming without just throwing my textbooks at them.
What sources would you recommend for learning?
Top comments (4)
What I think she needs is a curriculum. There are a lot of useful and free resources, but for a beginner it would be hard to know which one to pick.
Thus, I’d recommend freeCodeCamp.
After some time I’m sure she will know which resource is worth taking the time to explore it.
I also think it is very important to apply this “rule” every time you are learning something new: prioritize quality over quantity.
Does the course have 300+ sections? Don’t let her think that if she completes the first 100 by the end of the week she will gain a lot of knowledge. She might only complete the first 10 within the first week, first 2 weeks, doesn’t matter! Even if time is a problem, it is important to make sure you understand what is presented to you(for example, by trying to find another working example, by building stuff based on what you just learnt) in the first place.
She might find the first lessons not really “practical”(looping through an array, conditionals etc), but I think it’s better to take the time to learn and not underestimate them now, than to spend time understanding them later, when you’d face a “practical” example.
Another thing I find useful is to take notes of what you’ve learnt at the end of the day. Just a few bullet points of what you were glad to learn today.
Good luck!
When I was first learning to code, I started with Codeschool (now Pluralsight) and Codecademy. Codeacademy is free to get started, so it's a great way to start learning the basics, before committing to a course or bootcamp.
Traversy media also has good, free content on Youtube.
This may sound silly, but the Hello, Ruby children's book was really good at breaking down the base concepts of programming. I had no shame in reading it during my lunch break.
Once she starts, have a conversation with her on how it's going, what formats she likes and doesn't like and go from there.
It's cool that she wants to learn to program.
That's easy :
"Learning Python" Asher & Lutz, O'Reilly
Why does she want to learn programming? Good advice for her will look very different depending on her motivations & goals.