Programming tips I.

So you decided to learn something new. A good decision. It shows you are willing to step out of your comfort zone and to put some time and effort into something.  But what should you think of? What’s important? What programming language to learn?  And how to start?

Why to start ? Define your mission

Regardless whether the reason to start is just to learn something new and cool or to pursue a career, make sure you have one. You’ll need a lighthouse on your way through the realms of code where you’ll meet unexpected enemies (like SyntaxError or IndentationError), face despair (I’ll never get how this works), exhaustion (coffee is not working anymore) and defeat (I give up, this can’t be solved).

When you are going through these challenging situations and feel down and exhausted, have a break, do something else .. and then picture that lighthouse and go back to work and learning.

What language to choose? Arm yourself

A programming language is actually .. a language ! A set of instructions you want your program to execute. Like any human languages there are some more demanding (French, Czech) and some easier to handle (English, Spanish). And it’s not just the quality of a language – you need to consider how many people speak it and what can it be used for. It makes no sense trying to learn something which is spoken by only a few or with limited use .. unless it’s your aim.

You are looking for something many people speak (like Chinese), easy to learn (like Spanish) and also universal among countries and promising for the future – you are looking for “English of coding”. Good news – such a language exists. Welcome the Python!

Python is a Swiss Army Knife in your pocket. Easy to learn (it’s in fact like simplified English). With many different areas of use (Data Analysis, Machine Learnig, Web Development, Automation .. ). With a vast potential for future. The perfect one to start with.

After you learn your first one, you can always learn more and become bilingual, trilingual or even more .. and master JavaScript, C#, C++, PHP, Go, Swift, Ruby, Kotlin ..

Let Python be first in your arsenal:

https://www.python.org/

Your kingdom – IDE

You’ll need your own workplace – actually a playground for your practising. It’s time to choose your IDE. Integrated development environment (IDE) is basically an upgraded notepade where you write, edit and play around with your code.

The key difference to notepad is that IDE is designed for coding (and much more than that), it helps you to write your code better, offers ideas how to improve it and it gives you ideas and advices on different aspects of programming, code structure and the way it works. And errors. In the beginning you’ll get plenty of these little devils. Your IDE will help to identify, find and explain them to you so you can conquer them. The result will be the more time you spent in your kingdom and the more errors you come across the better you get.

Here are a few IDEs you can start with:

Thonny – basic, easy to use, Python is already integrated, when you want to take it easy  – for beginners

https://thonny.org/

VS code – easy to use and work in, great for training projects, perfect middleground – beginners to intermediate

https://code.visualstudio.com/

PyCharm – takes some time to become familiar with, offers more features, great for bigger projects, a professional’s choice – intermediate to advanced

https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/

If I am to recommend one to start with .. it would be VS Code for as long as you learn the basics of the language and create simple programs and projects. The moment you decide to go further – either becoming a pro or your projects grow in complexity – get the PyCharm.