What Did I Learn in 1 Week of Programming?
You can’t learn all the concepts of a language in 7 days, period.
Recently, I had to create a content strategy for an open-source community.
But, It was really difficult to identify topics!
Why?
Because I didn’t have an understanding of the field!
- I didn’t know what topics people are searching for
- What problems people are facing
So on and so forth!
I’ve realized that If I want to work in tech, I need to understand the user’s pain points.
Therefore, understanding how the technology works, what are the tech stack required, how the codes interact with hardware is essential.
And, this is the primary reason for me to get into coding.
It’s not my first interaction with coding though!
I learned Python3 in my college and created a couple of basic projects.
You can check them here.
Nevertheless, this time I wanted to start fresh! And here‘s my journey so far!
Learning What to Learn
When I wanted to learn to code, I started like everyone else, By googling “How to Learn to code?”
If you ever googled these queries, You can relate to my pain.
There are 1000s of coding languages, uncountable frameworks and god knows what! It’s extremely overwhelming!
I got scared within 1 hour of it!
But then I did the best thing possible!
I went to the discord community and asked a bunch of programmers what is a good starting point to learn coding.
And most of them suggested HTML.
- It’s easier
- It has immediate visual feedback, which will keep you interested in learning.
Then move to more advanced coding languages depending on your needs.
It stuck with me. Now I know, what to learn!
How to Learn Programming?
There are a lot of videos on YouTube claiming to teach you a programming language in 7 days.
Well, they probably can! But you can’t learn a programming language in 7 days. It takes a good amount of time and practice to learn the basic concepts.
But It doesn’t mean you can’t make cool things with the knowledge you have!
The trick here is, don’t focus on learning everything in one go.
Start with a goal of building something–be it an application, website, software, game, anything!
And learn enough so that you can achieve your goal.
It’s called Goal Oriented Learning. And I followed the same approach.
Getting My Hands Dirty with HTML
Since I knew what I wanted to build, I sat down, Installed Visual Studio, and opened up Mozilla Web Docs in one tab.
At first, it looks overwhelming. But if you read patiently and follow the step-by-step process mentioned in the Doc, It gets easier.
By following the documentation, I made this website in 3 hours.
It’s not finished yet. It was the first draft.
But, In 3 days, I was able to make a full-fledge responsive homepage.
Was it frustrating? — Yes!
Was it fulfilling? — Absolutely!
The endorphins you get after solving a problem is enormous.
It actually hooks you to coding and motivates you to build more things.
What did I Learn in 1st Week of Programming?
I wouldn’t say I learned HTML.
I still don’t know why some codes behaved in some ways. How some tags work and a bunch of other things.
But, what I got was confidence.
I know that if I need to create a website again, I can do it.
Yes, I’ll need help from Documentations, Stackoverflow, w3schools tutorials. But who doesn’t? Many seasoned programmers say that they still google to learn something.
Another thing I learned is that the programming world is HUGE!
There are loads of programming languages for different purposes.
If you want to get into programming, You should first decide which field you want to go to and, based on that, decide which language and tech stacks you wish to use.
Ok! Enough for today, I share my daily updates on Twitter. You can follow me there!
For now, Adios!
