July 1, 2024
Reading Time: 3 minutes

A lot of people wanted to learn coding. But often, we are strucked by fear because of what we hear and read about programming. We often hear how difficult it is to learn coding. That we should be in computer-related profession to do that. That we need to know everything about computers and programming languages. That we should be a genius to be a programmer. Well, we do not need to be.

OOP

Object Oriented Programming or OOP is a programming concept or paradigm that evolves in the idea of object. It is a very useful programming concept that let programmers to divide their codes into resusable modular components.

When I wrote my first programming project in college, the structural analysis software, I used the Visual Basic programming language. This language is an object oriented language, a concept that is really useful to know. But guess what, I didn't understand OOP or didn't even made myself aware of that concept at the time!

Yes I finished the program without understanding fully the language I used! But so what right? I wrote the software without fully learning the language. How? By learning bits by bits.

Fundamentals

If I didn't know the language fully then how did I even made progress in the process? Well, bits by bits.

Whenever I encounter a a task that needed to be done, for example how can I make something that does something, I search for it.

Search engines are our friends and they are out there so let's use them! You don't have to know everything and more specifically, you don't need to memorize everything! We have things for that!

Turns out that when I am searching for the solution, I am learning about functions! Yes I learned function without knowin what the term function means.

So what did I start with then?

Well, I started by knowing what variables are. I know how to start a project in visual basic. And most of all, I have something in mind to build with.

Motivation

Studying programming is not the main goal in studying programming. You should have a goal in mind.

If we are just studying a programming language but will not put that in use, most probably we will forget about them afterward! So the best way to learn is to have some motivation, something in your mind to build with.

This is how I learned all the languages I know today. I didn't study them just because I want to learn them. I studied a language because I think they are useful to what I have to create. For example, I will study HTML, CSS and Javascript to learn how to create a website. I studied PHP because that was popular back then in writing dynamic websites. I will not study something like PHP just for fun.

You need something. You need a purpose to study a programming language. At least that is the best for me.

How Do You Know Exactly What To Learn?

Well you don't at first. For me, you take what you have and have a go with it. Use what you know now and trust me, with enough encourgaement and motivation, it will pan out. You will know what you need along the way.

In the world of coding, you just need the fundamentals in order to start. You don't need to know advanced concepts such as lambda functions etc. Just the basics and you should be good to go. The most important thing is you start!