Simple methods to learn coding fast

Simple methods to learn coding fast.

There might be different reasons  as to why you want to learn a new programming language but with passion and focus and daily practice can go a long way over the course of a few months. Whether it's through programs like bootcamps or utilizing online resources or taking part in coding challenges, it   is very much possible to find a way to balance coding and learn a new programming language with your busy schedule. 

Through this article, you will know about the fastest and effective ways to learn a new programming  language. 

Here are the main points that we will discuss.

1.Why you should learn to code?

3. What coding actually means?

3. What are the benefits of coding?

4. Various languages that you could choose to start coding.

5. Understanding different steps that involves in learning a new programming language really fast.

Why you should learn to code?

Let us understand why you should learn how to code, there  can be different benefits that you can acquire when you learn to code.

1. First benefit of coding.

So the first benefit is that coding teaches you how to approach problem solving. It is all about seeing the bigger picture which you can break down into smaller particles and those smaller particles being smaller tasks that you can actually finish now. In my case, if you just told me to build a phone, i would break it down to smaller individual components and ask myself. So what are all the components that i would use for a phone.I would think of right breaking down stuff into digestible chunks which is also known as   reductionism. In a nutshell, reductionism is taking a bigger problem and breaking it down into smaller and smaller pieces until it's a single solvable task now. Also you can think of cars as an example now for us to understand how they work   we must disassemble it and examine each part and what it does to completely understand the bigger picture so the first biggest advantage of learning how to code is it teaches you how to approach problem solving.

2. Second benefit of coding.

The next most important benefit is it automates daily tasks and eventually saves time. Suppose, wouldn't it be great if you could automate all of the boring bits of your job but that doesn't put your job in jeopardy. You must be wondering that it would eliminate jobs in the real world, it really does but it also saves a lot of time and prevents human error.Now,imagine if we stopped progressing way back in time and said " i'm very happy with where we are". Well   we would still use animals combined with humans for agriculture.For example - life on a farm back then was not easy, we improved and automated the process by using different techniques and using different tools over a period of time. Now no one in the first world has to do crude hard work with their hands anymore, we have machines for that you could definitely greatly increase your daily   productivity by knowing just enough python to write scripts to fill in your excel. Now you would have extra free time and you could use the time for something else.So, definitely it automates tasks daily and saves time for yourself and many   other people.

3. Third benefit of coding.

Another benefit is job security and a great   salary. Of course! the salaries are great when   working in technology. Did you ever wonder, why   coders are getting paid so well. It's not like people are willing to invest so much money into the finance for no apparent reason. Coders and programmers are well paid because the job itself is very demanding and very difficult. You work around some of the smartest people on the planet   and they expect you to perform really well. No wonder so many developers really get paid well.   If you're into productivity and self-improvement you're really going to enjoy working around   people from the I.T industry. Everyone wants to squeeze the last drop of productivity out of everything and some of the stuff you create and see in your work is mind boggling and eye opening.

4. Fourth benefit of coding.

The last benefit is that we have an active and very friendly community. Coders and developers are some of the most fun and light-hearted people that   anyone has ever met. There's certainly a   personality pull for coders. For every programming language or framework, there's a community ready to welcome you aboard and talk and discuss and also clear all of your doubts. There is definitely no shortage of people ready to help you solve programming issues. They mostly happen to live on twitter,stack overflow,medium and github and you can also make different friends and interact with this community as much as you'd like to.

 

What coding actually means?

 

let's understand what is really coding. Coding is the process of creating instructions for computers using programming languages. In short, it is the process of using a particular programming language to get a machine i.e., a computer to behave how you would like to. Every line of code tells the computer to do something and a document full of these lines of code is called a script. Each script is definitely designed to carry out a particular job. For example, let us consider a program that take an image and change its size to   something else. So,that is coding. You're just creating instructions for a particular machine   using programming languages and this is where programming languages comes into the picture, you will have to learn a particular programming language to do a particular task in a certain way.

Various  programming languages that you could choose to start coding

1. PHP

The first language that we'll be discussing about is PHP i.e., hypertext preprocessor. PHP is used by 79% of all the website whose server side   programming languages we know. It is mainly used for developing dynamic and data-heavy websites and applications. It has been the cornerstone of the web for a really long time. PHP is basically a very simple fast and platform independent general purpose programming language   with over 631,000 repositories on github. So php is definitely one language that you could start learning   so some of the popular frameworks are CakePHP, Laravel, Symphony, Falcon and do on. Salary   is very high in india, it's almost 8,50,000 rupees per annum and in USA the average salary is 102,000 dollars. Some of the companies hiring php   professionals are facebook,yahoo and wikipedia.

2. SQL

Another really popular language is the structured query   language.The structured query language or sql   is a special purpose programming language used to interact with databases. A database is a collection of information that is organized so that it can be easily accessed,managed and updated. Computer databases typically contain   aggregations of data records or files containing information about sales transactions or interactions with specific customers. SQL is a really popular language. It works by analyzing and understanding databases consisting of fields of data within tables. Many fortune 500 companies have built their own high performance database systems using SQL to query data and perform analysis. With over 260,000 repositories on github   it eclipses the popularity of a lot of the newer languages when it comes to the data analytics field. Some of the popular frameworks are sql. So the average salary of an sql engineer is 97,000 dollars in USA and about 10 lakhs per annum in india. Some of the companies hiring SQL developers are Uber,Netflix,Airbnb,google and amazon.

 

3. Python

 

The next most popular language that we'll be  talking about is python. Python is a high level general purpose and a very versatile programming  language used in web development,machine learning, data science along with other cutting edge technologies. It is not only well suited for beginners but also for experienced programmers   it has over 1.6 million github repositories and is the basis of applications like the google app engine, ubuntu's ubiquiti installer and fedora's   anaconda installer. Some of the popular frameworks are Django, Flask and Pyramid. The average salary of a python developer in usa is 120,000 dollars  per year and 11,50,000 rupees in india. Some of the companies hiring python developers are Cisco IBM,Mozilla firefox, Google, Quora, HP, Dropbox etc.

 

4. Javascript

 

The most obvious reason for learning javascript is to become a web developer. Being proficient in javascript will enable you to build websites from scratch which is a pretty useful skill to have in today's   job market. Hence,it has a robust community featuring more than 822,000 repositories on github. Some of the popular frameworks of javascript are   node.js,angular,react.js,Vue.js,Meteor.The average salary in usa is 117,000 dollars and 16 lakhs per annum in india. Some of the companies hiring javascript developers are google,facebook,sap,dell etc.

4. C or C++

Finally the next language for you to  start off with is c or c++. It acts as a stepping stone for a budding programmer. Both of the programming languages are quite popular and highly functional irrespective of the great number of quality alternatives in the modern market. Now these languages still rule about 20% of the programming world with a legacy bigger than any other   programming language that has been   around as long. Some of the popular libraries are mfc,.net,kdm,gnome etc. The average salary of a c or c++ plus developer in usa is about 114,000 dollars and 10 lakhs per annum in india. Some of   the companies hiring c or c++ dvelopers are ebay spotify,phone pay,ibm etc.

Simple methods to learn coding fast.

Firstly, you will have to master the fundamentals that you can learn from various  online resources. You can also participate and solve coding challenges then you can implement your knowledge on working on your own projects  and finally you can also take help from various online communities that are available on the internet. You must be persistent on these steps to learn a new programming language really fast.

So let's move ahead and learn the first step for you to learn a new programming language really fast.

 

1. Master the fundamentals.

So, firstly you will have to master the   fundamentals. As elementary as they may appear at   first programming fundamentals always need to come first,the better you understand them the easier it is to learn more advanced concept. For example students who rush   through the beginning of their courses,where we focus most on the fundamentals   are often the first to get stuck as they transition into more advanced material such as back-end programming. So before you skip the first class of computer science 1O1 or skip chapter 1 of an online tutorial, keep in mind that you're overlooking the most important step in your learning. Some people tend to learn frameworks like ruby or rails without really getting to   know the language. In this case that is rupee that's a huge problem especially when talking about rails that really plays with ruby as a dsl that is a domain specific language. So it's really important for you to master the fundamentals. If you keep your fundamentals really strong you can build a really tall and strong building over it.  So always keep the core strong.

 

2. Online resources.

The next step is to learn from online resources.   There are various online resources that are available on the internet today. For debugging you can use stack overflow and you could also use  google which has the most maximum amount of information that is available on the internet.  You can also work on various ide's like visual studio code, pycharm, eclipse etc. You could also pick up and look at various codes or projects   online from version control tools like github. Github is basically an online code hosting repository where anyone can post their projects or codes online for the world to see it and interact with. The best part of github is you can   download the projects to your computer and make changes as you'd like. So you can really improvise on the already existing projects or already existing code. Also you can learn from different platforms like youtube,edX,udemy and skillshare. There's several people online who are sharing the knowledge on platforms like youtube, udemy,skillshare so you can look at their videos   and learn information for free and paid options.Youtube is free but platfirms like udemy,codeacademy, and skillshare are paid. 

 

3. Solve coding challenges.

 

The next important step is to solve coding challenges this is really important. A great way to improve your skills when learning to code is by solving coding challenges. Solving different types of challenges and puzzles can really help you become a better problem solver, learn the intricacies of a programming language, prepare for job interviews, learn new algorithms and much more. Where should you solve coding problems?

Top online websites or platforms for solving coding challenges.

(a) Top Coder 

Top Coder is one of the original platforms for competitive programming online. It really provides a list of algorithmic challenges from the past that you can complete on your own directly online   using their code editor. Their popular single run matches are offered a few times per month at a   specific time where you can compete against others to solve coding challenges the fastest with the best score. The top ranked users on top coder are very good competitive programmers and regularly compete in programming competition.

(b) HackerRank

HackerRank provides challenges for several different domains such as algorithms, mathematics, sql, functional programming, artificial intelligence and much more.  You can solve all the challenges directly online   they provide a discussion and leaderboard for every challenge and most challenges come with an   editorial that explains more about the challenge and how to approach it to come up with the solution. Aside from the editorial you cannot  currently view the solutions of other users on hacker rank. HackerRank also provides the ability for users to submit applications and apply to jobs by solving company-sponsored coding challenges.

(c) Code Chef

Another platform is code chef. Code Chef is an indian-based competitive programming website that provides hundreds of challenges. You're able to   write code in their online editor and view a collection of challenges that are separated into different categories depending on your skill level. They have a large community of coders   that contribute to the forums,write tutorials and take part in code chef's coding competitions. 

Finally code wars provides a large collection of coding challenges submitted and edited by their own community. You can sort the challenges  directly online in any of the several languages and you can view a discussion for each challenge as well as user solutions.

4. Work on your own projects.

The next important thing is to work on your own projects. This is very important and we'll be discussing some examples that you can work on your own project.

Project 1 (Chess Game)

The first example is you can build your own game for example you can build a chess game. A chess game is a great way to take a classic game you may already know and turn it into a program.So it makes for a fantastic starter piece. You'll start by mapping out your board and then your pieces   then you'll go on to giving specific movements for your pieces. You'll be forced to think of just as a programmer trying to turn concepts into algorithms a computer can understand. Chess is one example,you can build any game that you'd prefer like a tic tac toe or anything you know.

Project 2 (Mobile Application)

The next example is to create a mobile application. Now it's important to be able to create interfaces that are mobile device   friendly. You don't need anything other than html   and css to create beautiful layouts that   can be worked into an android or an ios app. This project is important because it teaches you how to create an interface not just coding logic. You don't have to copy the code line by line ehen you're creating such applications. Try giving it your own flavor and make it look how you want. There is no limit to the type of designs you can make using css.

 

Project 3 (to do list application)

Also you can create a simple to-do application or to-do list. Building a to-do list application is another great coding project to test your programming skills. It involves most of what you need to create a simple user interface,buttons,animations,user interaction and   events.

Project idea 4 (Web Scrapper)

Web scraper with python is another example. Python is famous for how well it works for just   about any coding project. You can use python along with a python library called beautiful soap to really extract data from html and xml documents.   This example of web scraping exports the data into a csv file. So you can use a program like excel to   create charts,graphs,plots and much more using your data. Pthon can do more than scraping html   code,you can build twitter,instagram or reddit bots using pythons. All you need to do is you need to download a python distribution that is called anaconda to build this project. It is a large library with all kinds of tools built in to use python. Learning how to find and download   helpful tools is going to be very critical and important as you advance as a coder.

Project idea 5 (simple website)

Last example   that we'll be talking about is to build   a basic html website. Few projects will teach you as much as building a full html and css website. Creating a very simple website combines   design principles,file linking,web hosting and coding logic. This is a great piece to include in your portfolio especially if you're on your way to becoming a web developer. Complexity of your website will grow the more you learn. Other programming languages you discover can be used on   the backend of websites making them a fantastic go-to when flexing your programming skills

5. Take help from online community

The last but not the least is to take   help from online community. Oviously as a beginner you'd need a lot of help. You'd have a lot of problems   that will be occurring, you'll have bugs   that will pop up in your program .So all of these problems can be solved only if you're ready and willing to take help from online community platforms. 

GitHub

Github is a supporting community where   more than million people learn share and work together to build a software. The github community forum is a place where you can share your ideas   codes and even follow discussions and topics   that might interest you. 

Stackoverflow

Stackoverflow on the other hand is an open community for anyone that codes. They help you get answers to your toughest coding questions,share knowledge with your co-workers in private and find your next dream job. You can get answers to more than 16.5 million questions and give back by   sharing your knowledge with others.

Free Code Camp

Free code camp on the other hand is a non-profit community that helps you learn to code by building   projects. Each month,they help millions of people to learn about coding and technology.Check the development community and get insights or learn new tips and tricks that you can apply to your code.

Women Who Code 

"Women who code"  on the other hand is one of the developer communities that is built to empower women in technology. They have more than 200,000 members who are carrier age tech professionals operating at each level of the industry. You can find coding resources, leadership opportunities, job vacancies and events that can advance your technical skills through their global development community.

Conclusion

Persistency is the key to learn code fast. Follow these steps continuously. Try to repeat your lessons. No one can clear the concepts in a single shot. Give it another try, take help from community and you will succeed soon.