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Looking to learn coding by teaching myself (full stack). Looking for tips

1 points by ashfernandez ↗ HN
Hit me with your best intro to programming recommendations.

I've dabbled with react.js and node.js, but looking for wider perspectives for full-stack programming.

1. Recommended languages to learn (and why) 2. Teaching resources (online courses, youtube channels, etc.)

Much love.

8 comments

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changer1
codeacademy might be useful
ashfernandez
Been getting a lot of Codeacademy recommendations on Reddit as well.
downrightmike
Soup to nuts, This is really good to actually make something rather than just study: https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial... He has a react tutorial too, but I didn't get through that.

I will say that you should look at your local community college and see if they have programming classes. They are usually cheap, taught by retired working professionals and more hands on with smaller class sizes. If you want programming to click easier, this would be my actual recommendation.

l3l_aze
Odin Project and freecodecamp were highly recommended on Reddit a couple years ago, no idea if that still holds up. Worth looking into. Colt Steele/Udemy/paid courses you can't guarantee are up to date suck because of low effort updates to outdated content.

MDN (Mozilla Dev Network) is best for detailed documentation, and has plenty of small lessons but no actual bootcamp/course. Avoid w3schools except for reference documentation; they have gotten better, but there's still plenty of simplified examples that are bad practice like inline styles and event handlers.

One of the first lessons from good teachers is to not compare yourself to others, as everyone learns differently. Only compare yourself to your past self. Programming is extremely complex and usually doesn't "just work" for the brain, so any progress towards understanding is great.

ashfernandez
Reddit as of today is still recommending Codeacademy and Odin Project, so I'll likely start there.

You have any recommendations for front and backend languages?

Mainly focusing on website and web app development.

l3l_aze
Can only recommend HTML5/CSS3/ECMAScript (modern JS) as I'm not deep into the backend yet. No matter what else is piled on top they are the core, and others are using them on some level. The languages you use are less important than the concepts you will learn, in the long run. Because if you know how to do something in one lang/stack you can do it in any comparable alternative provided enough documentation/StackOverflow and time. I went for languages instead and though I can "just read" some code I don't fully understand in random languages, I also don't have as good of a grasp on my preferred & used languages.
brudgers
Just start. It doesn't matter where. What matters is where you go and starting is the only way you will get anywhere. Looking for tips is easier than starting, but it only feels like work. It isn't. Work is hard, learning to program is work, hard work, anything that doesn't feel like hard work doesn't do the hard work that needs to be done. Good luck.