Teaching yourself to learn programming? Start Here!

hey everybody what's going on I'm Andy I'm a self-taught software developer in this video we're gonna talk about is if you are brand new to programming if you just heard about getting into software development web development and you're trying to figure out what you need you to start well this is the video you want to watch I'm gonna go through and really lay out a 3-month plan for you so that way it's pretty clear what the next steps are and then you can figure out the rest or at least reevaluate after that so if you're new here and you're trying to figure out who the heck am i who's this guy that's talking well I'm Andy and I'm a full-stack developer and I'm also a mentor to people who are looking to get into this field so I help people learn the skills that they need as well as figure out how to land that first job so I highly recommend subscribing below make sure to also hit the bell icon to get notifications anytime I put out a new video so without any further ado let's just dive into it so who am i talking to who is the ideal person who this video is for so let's say you've watched a few of my videos and maybe watch some other of youtubers videos and they were talking about how they taught himself to be a programmer or software developer web developer or maybe you just you need a friend told you you could do it and now you really you really want to do it you don't exactly know where to start maybe you bought a course maybe you are reading a book and you're just like I'm not sure what the next couple months should look like so let me break down what I think you should do but also give you reasoning and principles behind how you're gonna do it so number one thing that you want to do no matter what you what approach you take is you've got to keep it simple right simplicity is going to be the thing that takes you the next part of your journey any sort of complexity is going to kill you like anything that's complex so let's say you're you're you're gonna learn Python if you're going to make your your roadmap very complex and have all these complex applications you're gonna build the next air B&B with that and you're gonna build the next Facebook with it you are you know you're setting the expectations high which is fantastic I love it but you've got to keep things as simple as possible also included with this is if you're going to learn something like Python or it may be even JavaScript that's probably one of the most common ones right if you're going to buy every course on udemy or buy like four or five books that you saw on Amazon that was recommended to you you're making this more complex than it has to be your course collecting which is really bad because you're you're buying a bunch of courses thinking that's help you but you're adding complexity to this so those are the the two things you want to keep in mind took right off the bat the last thing I'd say is you want to anything that you learn so anything that you learned with us HTML CSS JavaScript c-sharp Java you name the programming language you name whatever you want you want to make sure that you're using projects or you building projects along with going through your learning resources so if you're reading a book if you're going through your Deming course you want to be building projects on the side in your portfolio to give you to make sure that you're using those concepts that you're learning but not only that it gives you something you can demonstrate to an employer potentially that you know what you're doing so those are my basic keys now here's what I recommend again if you're super brand new if you've already got some experience under your belt if you know HTML and CSS you need a little bit of JavaScript this probably doesn't apply to you but if you just want a simple plan to keep - for the next three months here's what I recommend I highly recommend learning HTML CSS then JavaScript make sure a long way you learn get as well and just learn about client-server architecture now this is the basics of web development so you may ask yourself like whoa I actually want to be a software developer I would be a programmer that's fantastic you don't have to do this route my simple suggestion and this is from people who I've talked to people all the time about getting into software development most people don't know what they want most people are interested in getting a job as soon as they possibly can they want to get into this career as soon as possible they don't want to wait around they don't want to wait you know five years to learn learn every nook and cranny of programming then try to go straight into back-end or straight into game development or something like that so if you're the type of person I recommend just starting with the basics of web development so HTML CSS JavaScript like I said get that's kind of universal amongst programming but and then learn client-server architecture so that's my basic recommendation you can - it does it it's not the right way there's people who have have done it in many different ways but after you go through that then you can maybe change your path after those three months of learning those basics you can go in and change now by the way my recommendations come from learning or spending about 15 hours per week studying so if you don't have that much time maybe this is a four or five or six month plan but if you can least get 15 to 20 hours in this you can make good progress now let's just go through each very quickly so HTML and CSS how long should you spend on it my general recommendation is bare minimum I'd say one to two weeks maximum about a month and I highly recommend a good learning resource is the head first HTML and CSS book now that's a really nice way to learn it that's how I learned HTML and CSS so that's how I learned the bulk of the basics because the head first series really is good at teaching things in a fun way more than anything else but it also gives you just what you need to know and not everything it's not most comprehensive but you don't need to know everything you just need to know the basics to move forward so my recommendation is if you have never heard of HTML CSS P the HTML and CSS if you've never touched it spend about a month learning it use the head first HTML CSS book and then move on okay so one or two weeks if you're really well-rounded in that area a month if you really need work then the next thing you want to spend is that at least the next two months learning JavaScript and obviously the learning resource I would recommend as well is the head first JavaScript series I swear I don't get paid by these guys but it's just it's what I use in a way what I recommend to people and it seems to really resonate but the head first javascript book in the same manner that the head first HTML book it's a really good learning resource it will teach you the basics it's fun it's not gonna teach you everything you don't have to memorize stuff there has a lot of fun activities to do and so you want to work your way through that now with both of these with both HTML CSS and JavaScript here's the key you want to build projects as you're learning so with HTML and CSS I would recommend building one or two static websites as you're learning so you want to basically you could do something like build your own personal website you could build a website for a friend maybe they have some sort of business that they'd like an online presence for but just keep it simple like don't try to rebuild you know your favorite website like you know don't try to rebuild Google or like ESPN or this website I go to clearly look whatever cool website you go to on a daily basis that looks really cool you don't have to build that just build a simple website for yourself or someone else that's for HTML and CSS when you go to JavaScript though you want to probably create about two to four projects to paint on your skills and how quickly you can progress they should be simple remember simplicity is what I recommend in the beginning so you want to keep it's dead simple with this so tic-tac-toe game could be a really simple one right maybe a Frogger game or some other sort of video game that you liked as a kid that you know would be very simple to build also a simple web app so you could build something like a to-do list that's a very common one a calculator of some sort like keep it simple you don't have to build the next Airbnb that's the one mistake I've seen so many people make they're like you know I don't have any projects I can build because I haven't thought of a good business plan I haven't thought of a good business idea it's like you're just trying to learn JavaScript man like you don't need to learn you'll have to build an actual application you just need to start with something simple don't undersell this idea like don't don't don't think that just by building a calculator app it's like all it's that's not good enough you're just working on the basics you're trying to learn the fundamentals the first three months you're not going to become a software developer a programmer most most likely so you just want to build something simple to get your skills underneath you so HTML CSS and JavaScript those you know during the first three months you're gonna focus mostly on JavaScript you really get the problem solving skills better to understand the some of the basics of just programming in general now I'd also mentioned get in client-server architecture now git is if you don't know about git I highly recommend doing a little research it's basically if you've never heard about before it's a way to work on code or work on a project with other people wait so if I'm on a computer here and you're on your computer we can work on a project same code collaboratively and it's a way to save the state or the history of that project over time so you know how like when you're working a word document and you you're like sitting there you don't want to delete a paragraph because you might want to use it later we'll get sort of plays that rule of allowing you to see what you had in the past in your project and maybe use that code later on you can find more information about it but you want to get comfortable with the git command line using github posting projects on github and the last part learning about client-server architecture that's just a basic paradigm of how the internet works how the how websites work so you want to understand the basics of that so maybe you need to understand more about HTTP traffic networking in the internet so overall that's my recommendation learn HTML CSS and JavaScript with the head first books learn good as well as well as client-server architecture learn more about the Internet and in your first three months that's pretty good make sure you have projects to show for it don't just go through the books and figure that's enough once you've completed those three months then you are going to know more about a whether you even like this or not maybe you don't even like it and then B you'll have a better sense of things you'll have more knowledge under your under your feet around your in your tool belt or in your brain and then you can move on and do something else potentially you can either take in a different direction you can continue learning web development maybe learn a JavaScript framework if you haven't already but at that time you can make that decision for the first three months you just focus on doing the work from there you can figure everything else out alright guys and that's really it so thank you so much for watching guys I hope you enjoyed this video I hope it was helpful leave a like leave a comment if you have any questions I'll try my best to answer other than that if you haven't already I highly recommend joining my free Facebook group I post a lot of content there that I don't post on YouTube I also have some live Q&A events from time to time to help answer your questions so highly recommend going and joining they're at an Easter quits com forward slash group other than that guys thank you so much for watching and as always [Music]

Channel: Andy Sterkowitz

Views: 324,388

Rating: 4.9712887 out of 5

Keywords: learn to code, learning to code, programming, learn programming, learn to program, how to learn to code, computer science, web development, coding for beginners, computer programming, how to code, coding, how to learn programming for beginners, programming for beginners, how to learn to code quickly and easily, learning how to code, learning web development for beginners, learning web development, andy sterkowitz, self-taught programmer, self-taught software developer

Id: GiUDWx9NpMU

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 01 2019