The digital world has arrived – and with its arrival, the need to learn to code is beckoning everyone. Be it for a career switch or picking it as a hobby, coding certainly allows you to expand your horizons and build awesome apps that you’ve always dreamt of. Oftentimes it’s also a way of testing your acumen. But of course, like all good things, even coding requires a particular methodology and discipline. Luckily enough for us, owing to the Internet, all the resources to learn coding are readily available at our fingertips.
In this post, we’ll explore 10 quick tips that’ll help you embark on your coding journey.
1. Start with why: The golden rule to begin anything is to start with finding the purpose. Because when you do, it puts you on the right path and direction for learning. If you’re inclined towards a serious programming career, your path should be well-defined and rigorous. But if you’re interested in building apps and games for fun, you can lay your hands at the myriad coding tutorials and guides that are available at a free of cost.
2. Take your first tiny step: Beginnings are quite scary, but not beginning at all could be even scarier. Learning to code requires a great deal of patience and the ability to take the first tiny step. Start with spending a little amount of time each day, and push yourself to learn and practice with every passing day. In the initial days you might need some motivation, but when you fall into the pattern, it won’t be so difficult. Mark our words.
3. Soak inspiration from the coding pros: Imitating the best practices of the coding pros can be truly beneficial. No, we’re not kidding. When you start observing how a coding pro or famous tech leaders function, it will give you the confidence that everyone started small to reach where they are right now. So, you too should!
4. Practice, practice, practice: Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day and no one becomes a superhero overnight. To get better at something, you must invest your time and efforts into practicing it. Likewise, in coding too. You must get yourself familiar with it and add it to your daily routine.
5. Free online coding tutorials: As and when you get better at coding, you’ll need more than just self-help. You’ll need a methodology and proper resources for learning to code. So, now you can lean on some websites that teach coding for free.
Here are our best picks:
1. Code Academy: This interactive coding platform has helped several individuals transform their lives over years.
2. Khan Academy: Perfect to begin with solidifying the basics.
6. Programming books for reference: When learning something new, it is common to get stuck. So keeping programming books for reference comes very handy. Here’s Github providing you with a wide range of over 500 free programming books: http://bit.ly/19Y5GjP.
7. Take a break: It’s important to infuse fun while learning something new. Listen to music, watch some conference presentations like Google IO or TED Talks for inspiration. You can also go ahead and play some coding games that’ll allow your brain to breathe and have fun.
Why don’t you get started with Coding Game?
8. Meetups: Absolutely nothing like connecting with like-minded people and code newbies through Meetups! It is a wonderful opportunity for you to know the interesting projects that other coders are working on. It can get even better when you can collaborate and code.
9. Put your skills to test: If you’re wondering how to put your skills to test, begin with solving some challenges. You’ll find multitude challenges online, but our personal choice is Code Wars as it offers a full gamut of choices ranging from practicing to learning new skills and gaining badges.
10. Build an app: What’s more exciting than building an app on your own? Although it might sound a bit overwhelming, understand that you can build something small.
So, there, these are our 10 best tried and tested quick tips that’ll help you to learn coding. If you have any other particular choices or recommendations, do drop them in the comment box below.