Are you a computer geek, always spending time on the computer, either creating new programs and what not? Well that’s great because not everybody has the talent to do so. But, the thing about this is that it can be pretty time consuming, and expensive; although, you’d make good money if you continued a career in the IT department. Now what most people end up doing is coding, and programming, which is almost considered the same. However it takes some skill. So if you plan on enhancing your skills the best way is to sign up for classes, there are plenty. And there are some of the best online sources to learn programming for free from, that’s would be amazing as you’d be able to learn without spending, and you wouldn’t even have to go anywhere. So why not give it a try right?
What exactly is programming?
For those of who you who don’t know what it is must have heard of it. Well what it is a process of designing, and building a functioning computer program that can be used to accomplish a certain result. It uses special computer language to specialize in the communication of other computers, applications, and more on. If you want to program you would have to become familiar with the languages. They are; BASIC, C, C++, COBOL, FORTRAN, Java, Ada, and Pascal. These languages are a set of grammatical rules, which will aid in the process of the computer preforming specific tasks. Now within these there are main types of programming language, it being; Procedural programming language, Functional programming language, Object-oriented programming language. There are a couple of more programs, but these are the most used.
How to learn programming
In today’s world programming is a sought after skill, so it wouldn’t hurt to get a hold of it. So if you’re interested then this is how you can learn. First of all understand the language, and get familiar with it. There are tons of languages out there, the most common being C++, and Python. Starting of with C++ is better for some people as it isn’t too easy, or too hard. Start learning the basics, like variables, data types, syntax, loops, and more, with these you could try to start solving basic questions. Further along the way you could try learning the data structures and algorithms. The data structure will help in choosing the right way to solve the problem, and the algorithms will help with understanding the mechanism of the functions.
Next you could also compete in programming competitions. They are many online, and it will help you gain a sense of what kind of problems need to be solved and so on. There are even companies that allow contributions on open source projects. For example, MeetnFuck App offered the opportunity to work on its date matching algorithm even offering compensation for innovative developments. Making a project will also be beneficial to your learning skills. Get some development framework, like Flask, or Ruby, and then make an application. Trust me this will teach you so much, and you could even start to feel like a software developer. After all of this you’ll have to explore this field, test the waters and see how it goes. With programming there are a bunch of opportunities that you can’t miss out on if it’s something that you love to do.
Where do you learn it from?
If you’re interested you obviously need to find someone to teach it to you. There are plenty of programming courses that take place at institutes, or institutes designed especially for that creation. These would cost you over a $1000. And you can get it done online too, but these are also for money, and would cost around the same. But what if I told you can get it for free. You just have to find the right site, some of the best online sources to learn programming for free is through:
- Codeacademy: uses interactive learning
- freeCodeCamp: perfect for hands on learners.
- Coursera: classes are taught by real professors for free.
- edX: coursed governed by MIT/Harvard.
- Codewars: coding competition.
- GA Dash: project based learning.
- Khan Academy: offers tons of subjects for free.
- MIT Opencourseware: do a course at the extremely hard to get in MIT, it’s free.
- The Odin Project: created by a Viking code school, you can get extra help through videos.
- Udacity: offers free coding courses, even nanodegrees.