Is this a good way to learn programming?

[MoTechie]

Hi, I hope to benefit from this Forum. I've been doing research on a career in coding/programming and now I'm very interested and motivated to learn it. I'm a complete beginner and limited financially at present. So I'm confused as to how to go about it. I love reading a lot and sitting on my laptop, so no problem with studying. I'm the type of person that likes to learn an important big wide subject in stages. To first get a decent background and understanding of it. Then to go deeper into it. Is the following way a good way to go about it?
Go through books such as Sams teach yourself Html, CSS and JavaScript, then some frameworks such as Bootstrap and jQuery. Then make 2 or 3 projects for my GitHub Portfolio. This will be the Front End as far as I know. Then I do similar with the Back End by learning SQL, Python, and as a framework, DJANGO. Then do 2 or 3 more projects for my GitHub Portfolio. Then learn the remaining critical issues such as the latest Security features and Authentication features and e-commerce features. Then do 1 or 2 final projects. I could also learn about WordPress. I could also do a full stack online course on Udemy also after I feel comfortable. I think this whole study needs more than 600 hours. But it's worth it as it will open the doors to many good stable jobs, freelance work and also Smartphone App developing.
After this I can go to some short in-class intensive courses, if need be to round up my skills. Or maybe keeping regular contact with forums will give me enough assistance.
I would greatly appreciate your sincere advice.

 

[neanderthal]

Hold on chief! I applaud your independence and energy -- and how you happened to demonstrate knowledge of a whole lot of keywords that go beyond beginner. The 600 hour figure may be a reach. Thousand page SAMS books may not be newbie friendly.

My favorite tools to recommend to get some experience under your belt have several things in common
a) language
b) integrated programming environment
c) a community of helpful people
d) have tons of free code.
e) is free

The integrated environment is good for several reasons. You have less opportunity to screw up by using you "favorite editor" in case things do not integrate seamlessly. You have an easier time running your code on the fly after making modest changes. If the need exists, other people can coach you through problems with language, but also with the editor, because they are using the same one.

The community is useful because you can write something and if it works you can show it off, and if it doesen't you can ask for opinions on why it didn't. At a higher level you can also ask for comments on your style so you can build software that runs more quickly or is less likely to break at random.. As you gain experience you can try to help and learn that there are ways to screw up you never imagined. Also you can make friends who also want to learn how to program and will validate your feelings.

Code is great in all sorts of ways. You can see stuff that other peoples imagination has brought to life. You can add features to their program, which will test your understanding of unfamiliar code and test your mettle in coding clean changes. If you notice bugs, you can let the author know, or you can put your feelings on the line and see if they have any useful suggestions for your code.


Scratch, published by MIT's Lifelong Kindergarten. Usable by kids, but one guy I couneled to start with it used it for a few months and moved on to Python, Ruby, RaspberryPi computers and integrating environmental I/O that I can't really relate to (by God I'm proud of the guy and Scratch!). It integrates programming and graphics and can make games, tell stories, do presentationy things. Re-envisions programming itself as a visual process. Makes it hard to misconstrue loops, conditionals and other features of coding in this language, and will burn these into your consciousness in a way that will stay with you. Runs on net connected Windows and Mac machines. Community runs to the millions with similarly dizzying codebase.

BASIC! a/k/a rfo_basic a/k/a de-re-basic written for Android, leveraging features of
Java. Comes bundled with an excellent manual in pdf, and 30 odd sample programs Additional online site with hundreds more examples of running code you can modify on one site and the community on another. SQLite is built in and accessible. Examples on hand of BASIC! programs using html and Javascript. Normally if you write for Android, you do it in Java on a PC, and then export it to Android. BASIC! allows you write native code on an android device!

Anyhow, a couple of ideas.

 

[neanderthal]

Hi Ian! Thanks for the encouragement. Say, things seem to be kind of slow around here.