Ask HN: How did you master a programming language?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22891020

by Kaladin • 6 years ago

5 4 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

What would you suggest to a newbie getting his feet weight into programming?

juaniux• 6 years ago

If you want something practical that you can get a job with I highly suggest Fee Code Camp they offer various certifications including JavaScript programming language: https://www.freecodecamp.org/

If you just want to learn programming I suggest Python as a starting language, there are ton's of resources and YouTube videos on the subject. Just look for a tutorial that works for you and start there.

Biggest point, don't just read about it, type our the examples, run them. Code here, code there, code in your sleep, the only way you'll learn is by doing. Specially by running into problems.

I have 20+ yrs of dev experience and I still have my google page up to lookup errors, examples, and references.

carapace• 6 years ago

Those are two different questions.

What would you suggest to a newbie getting his feet weight into programming?

Learn assembly.

(Something tidy like the AVR chip used in Arduinos: ATMega328P microcontroller, or the PIC.)

Then learn a little about C and the asm that it compiles into. (Again, don't try to learn e.g. x86. It's a monster. Most C compilers can target AVR or PIC.)

If you start at the bottom and go up you'll do fine.

Do NOT start with e.g. Javascript or PHP or even Ruby or Python, it'll wreck you.

How did you master a programming language?

Someone once said to Yoyo Ma, "I'd give my life to play like you do." To which he replied, "I did."

"Do it every day."

simonblack2• 6 years ago

Give yourself a non-trivial project. It doesn't really matter what it is, you'll be 'building it to throw away' anyway.

Now start building it, with one hand on a good reference, and the other hand on the Google search page.

It'll be terrible code, but you'll be learning as you go. By the time you've built that program to your satisfaction, you'll have learned a lot.

So much so, that you will want to throw that first piece of crap programming away and to rewrite it properly.

simonblack2• 6 years ago

For the 'feet wet' question:

Some people have suggested assembly. That would be a good idea if we were still back in the simpler, less complex, 8-bit era of the Z80 or 6502 CPUs.

In today's world, I'd go for the "high-level assembly language" or in proper terminology, the C programming language.

To learn that, I'd buy the book of the same name: "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie.

Then follow the procedure laid out in my other comment.

Ask HN: How did you master a programming language?

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