Learning programming?

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Hi. No job etc. issues etc. from past few posts over the months and drama over the years. Original OCD Aspie interest was Psychology in college then boringly chose Criminal Justice mainly interested in psychopaths vs. REAL CJ UGH!

My mom started talking IT and they get paid well. I hated "learning a new language" in this case in college was Spanish UGH!

Well.

I think I found a new "special interest" "psychology" replacement. Uh! Computer Programming! One site was pure text so sort of confusing the 2nd was videos telling me but it's behind a pay wall so I quit it the 3rd talks and shows how and such. I even have notes and the basics of HTML down (just finding a program to MAKE a website now I think that's how it works not sure.)

Now onward to what's called CSS the color and pizaz of a website soon clickables etc. Also some cool program names Python and Ruby and I keep hearing how Apple is is making it easier to develop apps for the idevices. The skies the limit if I LOVE HTML to start off. Got a little stuck on Python but stick to basic HTML then go step by step don't want to rush it and get confused. WOW!

So excited I found a new Special Interest!

Any good NEWBIE books? YA!

I'm not much for programming. I enjoy it but I have trouble motivating myself to learn unless it's for a specific project, and I'm not in school or working right now so... no projects. Last thing I was doing was PowerShell integration scripting and that was a lot of fun.

I have a lot of experience with web hosting though - I've worked as a datacenter server analyst and as a junior sysadmin - so if you need help with getting web hosting set up (I think that's what you meant by "finding a program to MAKE a website") send me a PM. I'd be happy to help.

Congrats! I am glad you have found something that lights your fire. I particularly enjoyed user interface work because it touched on a visually creative side that I did not know that I have. CSS can make it all particularly fun, after getting beyond what was once an appalling lack of authoring and debugging tools.

If you are looking for reference resources, back on the day the O'Reilly books were popular. For more hardcore the official specs for HTML, CSS, etc., are publicly available somewhere on the web.

There is a good, free basic Python course on Coursera:
https://www.coursera.org/course/pythonlearn
Not only will that course give you a good grounding in Python, but it introduces fundamental concepts, structures and algorithms that will be useful in any language. This is a really great place to start. If you do it and have any trouble with anything, I would be happy to help.

Codecademy has a Ruby track that might interest you:
http://www.codecademy.com/en/tracks/rub ... racks/ruby

They also have JS and HTML 5 stuff that you will probably like.

Congrats on the new interest!

Thanks! codeacamdemy was text based help and I got as far as changing font sizes and font types (arial etc.) must have been putting stuff in wrong. Code avengers is behind a pay wall. Trying Kahnacademy now. I'll try coursera too. I am unemployed but may look into returning to school in the Fall and if I have some of this under my belt understood would be great. (I'm taking notes as I go along and surely I can rewatch videos type up my notes etc. vs. buying books since money is tight. So glad I found a new special interest.

Not as depressed and excited for the future now!! It's GREAT!

What happened, you couldn't get something to work?
Maybe I can help. There are some weird browser issues with Codecademy (e.g., it sometimes can't parse your code if the browser has a non-100% mag setting)

Generally speaking, learning to code or program involves trying something and failing, then stepping through it to figure out why it isn't working and iterating that process until it does work, at which point you feel awesome!

Don't be discouraged if you run into things that don't work! That's a normal and necessary part of learning.

Check out Thenewboston. This site has a lot of good stuff.

I decided to pursue an "associate's in IT" when I was 24 shortly after graduated from 4 year school with degree in marketing, my passion was sports and psychology. Even before my diagnosis later that summer I graduated, I knew that I would succeed more with technical things; and less so with the art of sales, just knowing myself after taking the different college classes. My thing was do what you're naturally good at, even if you don't love it, you can be exceptional at it and make more money. My hasty self stereotyping shortly after diagnosis pushed me over the edge to pursue IT; initially I did the "network admin" path, I was intimidated by programming, I thought it was only for prodigies who grew up programming...I soon found out that not only did it come easier to me than most but that it was indeed a better fit; it's like math but broader, just raw logic laid out as instructions. So my own past, simplistic, view of aspies made me assume that I would be good at it, because in hindsight, that's what it was, but I was lucky enough to guess right, I am naturally good at this; everyone else in my class was banging their heads against a wall, most will found out shortly that you're either cut out for it or you aren't.

If you do want to pursue this as a career, I would at least consider getting an associate's from a decent nearby community college (the fact that you have a BA makes you marketable as someone who works hard); given most employer hold a "comp-sci degree holder's only" sign. Money wise, Java (an object oriented language commonly used for business applications and applets) pays the most; Javascript (object oriented language to make the "mechanics" behind a websit (animations, interactivity, data holding ect.) is in the highest demand volume wise.

If you like like working with data and information, Java is a better fit; if you like web design, Javascript (with HTML and CSS which don't take terribly long to learn). I immediately propose these two particular languages because C++, C#, Ruby, Perl tend to be used for back end (the nitty gritty "server stuff") software; and without a a bachelor's in Computer Science, employment in back-end programming is a long shot. Java and JS (short for java script) is more popular with front-end programming, it deals more with the code that's "closer" to the customer/client/end-user, it's a more direct route to employment if you're not willing to invest in a whole new bachelor's.

Starting out with JAVA (Tony Gaddis) is a fantastic book (I highly recommend typing out all of the programs in the book as you go (typing things you read in a book surprisingly goes a long way). For JS: Javascript and JQuery (John Ducket) (goes well with codecademy). HTML: HTML ans CSS (John Ducket). There's some trendy fanaticism out there about "teach yourself programming or don't bother learning"...there's truth to it, a book (particularly used for a class) does not foster creativity...but it will instill good basic habits that make making your programming style more efficient and tailored to common conventions in the workplace.

Last edited by BiffWellington on 14 May 2015, 6:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I just finished a one-semester course in introductory programming, using C++. We used the Gaddis book for that, and I liked it a lot. I absolutely agree about typing out the programs from the book. It made me focus on each individual part. The professor kept telling us to copy and paste whenever possible, but I ignored her most of the time. I can see how that would be very useful later on, but not for learning the basics.

Whenever I wrote a program for an assignment, I would start by writing a bunch of comments separated by spaces. In effect, I wrote pseudocode, which gave me the structure of the program, and got a lot of the commenting out of the way from the beginning.

I'm 57% done with HTML/CSS stuff. LOVE that it has evolved into p{color:blue;} instead of color:blue EVERY SINGLE sentence or part was aggravating simple { : and ; and <insert> and </insert> are mainly the keys to HTML know those and where to place them and what it's asking of you and I am grasping this 10x's more than I ever did Criminal Justice. My dad is struggling learning to become a boat captain since he's more of a hands on maintenance boat guy vs. the academic learning type. To me this coding is coming easy to me. Why did I waste my 4 year degree in Criminal Justice again? Hope to get done with HTML/CSS soon and also go back and take good notes then start my next program.

Not to throw you off track but if you're on css I recommend you take a look at SASS or LESS when you're done with your course. They're a good bridge into object oriented javascript which would be the next phase to learn. Basically with SASS or LESS you do normal CSS, but you can make a variable and reference it in the CSS to call the value. Say for instance you need hex color #555 on several different css classes, you could just make a variable name (@gray: #555;) and every time you need the color gray in an element you just call @gray.
example:
@gray: #555;
#examplediv {
color: @gray;
}
.someclass {
text-color: @gray;
}

Those example were LESS, SASS replaces @ symbol with $ symbol, but in essence they're the same thing. This makes it easy for you to code a color scheme across an entire website and easily change that coloring scheme by just changing the variables and not every line that has #555. You can also use mixins to further color code, example:
.darkergrayclass {
color: darken(@gray, 10%);
}

It does exactly what it sounds like it would do, it will take the #555 color and make it around #444 gray in the code when it's compiled. Like I said, it's a step after CSS but it teaches you how to use variables which is a good bridge to javascript. Sorry for being long winded.

Dammit, someone linked codeacademy before me. Otherwise there are some good free ebooks about C programming on the net. They helped me a lot even though I am still a beginner. Somehow I know more OpenGL programming than the standard C++ library programming.

Just one thing, can someone explain to me how float works. I know that it is about floating numbers but I do not know much about floating numbers nor their purpose.

Don't use floating point numbers unless you need a lot of precision. You'll mostly run into them with graphics, audio, and scientific applications. For most purposes there are other data types that won't hog up as much memory and will work just as well.
http://floating-point-gui.de/formats/fp/

Floating point is OK for internal number crunching, but you will want to round it for displaying it. This returns up to two decimal points (JavaScript):

function round(x) {
return Math.round(x*100)/100;
}

I've been programing since I was a little kid. It's a great fit for aspies! I always recommend http://processing.org for people learning. Great tutorials there and free tools. It's a wonderful platform for creating cool visual design and computer graphics experiments. Processing projects are called sketches and it enourages you to make lots of little ones. I make a folder for each year or month and fill them up with experiments as I find free time.

I would like to connect with more programming people. Maybe I can mentor someone who is learning.

Oh I think it is great for aspies because computers are very simple and very logical. And you can work from home on your own schedule. Being able to intensely focus is a huge asset in programming. And you can be alone in your own world of code for hours and days on end creating whatever interests you.