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Hello! I'm new to the community, so hopefully this is the right place for this kind of question.
I'm looking to start learning to code. I currently live in Toronto, Canada, and have worked retail for the last few years. When I was younger I had thought about getting into the CSs, but I fell out of interest with the idea. I do enjoy working on computers and used to spend quite a bit of my time playing around on them when I was a teen, especially in design, but otherwise have no coding experience beyond what they taught us in highschool.
I have no undergraduate degree, and was thinking of possibly enrolling in a bootcamp to help me get started. There seems to be so many bootcamp options that is a bit overwhelming tbh, and many have quite a high price tag associated with them. (10-20k for 6 months)
I have a friend who is a data scientist and he tells me not to bother with the expensive boot camps, but I feel as if that structure could help me as I'm starting off pretty much blindly.
I'm looking for a bit of guidance to get started. Should I be enrolling in free introductory courses, doing self-taught tutorials, and what areas of the industry should I be focusing on. (job roles, languages, etc.)
I know this is a super open-ended question, but any information at my stage is valuable information.
Thanks guys,
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I would not pay that for those camps.
One thing you need to decide at the very beginning is the direction you want to take. There are a lot of possible directions on technology, and for each path there is a language that fits better.
What you should have by all means is a set of skills that are "language" independant.
And no matter what you go for, your best friend will be the debugger. So learn how to use it well.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Why are you against the camps?
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The camps are mainly a way to fleece you out of your money.
It takes years of practice to become a productive software developer.
It's not something that can be rammed into your brain in 3 months.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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upvote - listen to the man.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I agree with the first commenter to your question regarding BootCamps.
To become proficient in any language will take you at least 6 months of concentrated study.
However, a programming language is just a starting point. You have to decide what you want to do with it. As a result, you should start your journey with a major language such as Java, C#, or VB.NET. All of these languages can handle the entire spectrum of development.
However, you will have to ask yourself if you want to become a game developer, a business application developer, an internals developer (ie: compilers, word-processors), or enter the complex world of scientific and engineering development.
In all cases, you will have to learn how to handle a database in your applications. Only with business application development will you need to learn how to develop for the Internet, though with other development genres there is some web development (ie: Internet based games).
Your best introduction to programming can be found on one of the many online course sites such as Udemy, which have many introductory courses to programming languages as well as the other aspects of development.
In any event, if you can tell me what your aspirations are, I could provide you with some suggestions on how to begin.
Please contact me at my email address at your convenience...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Camps cram a language into your head in a short amount of time and leave you believing you know what you're doing. To be fair, people do come out of these camps knowing a language, but my experience in interviewing these candidates is not a positive one.
Unfortunately, the compressed time schedule leaves no room for the really important things -- thinking and problem solving. These are learned with practice and experience. A new college grad who spent 8 semesters learning programming has had to solve numerous problems -- and has had the time to reflect on what worked, and what didn't. This takes elapsed time and realistically, most people need 1 to 3 years of professional work experience to honestly understand what they are doing.
That said, I give all candidates a fair hearing, and if they demonstrate problem solving and ability to think, their background is far less important.
Take a couple of free Intro courses to see if you want to do this.
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Amen.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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LoganJM wrote: I currently live in Toronto
Which is where CodeProject is based ...
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.. and yet: itself[^] ... flys the American flag. Must be an Iron Maiden fan.
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If I recall correctly, US was the default country when you sign up.
Either that or he subscribes to the "America's Hat" theory.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Habs ... wow, that sounds racist doesn't it? I'll show'em ... "I had no intention of whiting any sepulcer in the posting of this comment". There. Habs.
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Or during these days, “America’s Hat” conspiracy.
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RedDk wrote: Must be an Iron Maiden fan
There's obviously some reference I'm missing here. 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Elodia too!
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2 for 2, you're batting 1.000.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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lol, it's definitely the default country. I changed it now :p
... and I'm definitely not an iron maiden fan.
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Take a look at: best-websites-to-learn-to-code[^]
A lot of these websites are free, but of course you need some self-discipline to complete.
If you are more ambitious and want a certificate, EdX might be a good choice, the courses are free but you will have to pay for the certification.
More information here: learning-resources[^]
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Thank you!
Ambition isn't a problem for me, I'm good at setting tasks for myself and working to complete them on a daily basis and am able to keep a pace over time well enough. But I also want to maximize my time and chart a somewhat efficient course towards employment at some point.
I know I'd rather focus on building things, (apps/web), as opposed to mining blocks of code for data, but that is still obviously a pretty wide open statement.
If employment is the ultimate goal, would you suggest EdX or some of the tutorials on slant? Or both? I'll be taking my first steps in actually learning in the next week or two, regardless of what I ultimately gravitate towards, but I'd also like to maximize the usefulness of the commitments I'll be making towards learning after the initial introductions.
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If employment is the ultimate goal, a course that offers a certificate like edX seems best to me.
However web development is a broad subject, and you will have to learn several languages and preferably some SQL.
It makes sense to find out beforehand where you want to work and what technologies are used, there are also lists with the languages that are most in demand, see: index | TIOBE - The Software Quality Company[^]
Good luck, hope you don't get too scared 
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Ambition is not the issue.
The real issue is the ability to handle stress and frustration.
At a certain point, and it WILL come, you are gonna face a period where you get stuck.
All programming languages and the development environments you use have the ability to frustrate you with the most simple things.
I wish you good luck with your ambition, and I hope that you are not giving up.
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This is what I think...
First Thing To Do
Ask yourself what you'd like to build.
Do you just want to build a game? Is gaming your thing? Then start a simple project that allows you to build a game.
Would you like to build a journaling app? Something where you could save daily entries that store your activities? Then start a project that does that.
My point is that _programming is boring_ (for the most part). So you got to...
Keep yourself interested.
However, if you choose a project and try to get to it, you very well may fail (simply because you don't have the skills yet).
That's why the second thing you have to do is:
Don't View Missing the Goal as Failure
Even if you don't make it to the goal you will have learned a lot.
The Project Will Guide You
IF you do this, the project will guide you through learning the basics :
setting variable values
control structures (for, while, if, etc)
etc...
A Lot of People Who Just Try to Learn To Program End Up Quitting
Programming is full of nit-picky details and annoyances and options.
That's why if you just try to learn to program you may very well become bored and quit.
So, start thinking of what you'd like to build and then go build it.
Which technologies to focus on first?
I suggest HTML5, JavaScript, CSS.
Why?
1. It's everywhere. You can show your friends what you've done by loading it in a web page.
2. You don't need any special tools (just web browser and text editor)
3. No need to learn deep details (yet) like program compiling etc.
Beware JS!
However, as you start out with JavaScript, just beware. You can learn bad practices and do things that work that create problems in the future. Later you'll take the next step, but for now, just learn to get things working and promise to learn later why things should not be done certain ways.
Good luck.
PS - If you need some ideas of interesting projects, post back and I'll give you a couple.
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Thank you so much!
I know of a few things I'd like to build already. I definitely want to build an odds website for sports metrics, (I'm a big leafs fan) and I have a couple ideas for different apps that I would personally find useful.
I sat in on a couple bootcamp recruitment video calls, and a lot of the instructors mention the same thing in regards to bad practices. It is something I'll have to be conscious of.
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Related to raddevus's comment: find project's you like and find out what it took to make them. don't guess; even write to the companies to find out.
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I agree with the above. However, I took a different path. I got a book like O'reilly's C# book. I created every example in the book from scratch. Most of them didn't compile, so I fixed them. Once I got it to run, then I moved on. Just reading the book, I wouldn't have learned anything. When one book was done, I grabbed the next.
My list of "things to learn" would include XML, SQL, and a C-based language (like C++, C#, or Java). Almost no matter what you are working on, these will be useful at some point. Many other skills and concepts build on these 3 basics.
As for SQL, don't worry about the advanced stuff, but at least learn the basics. Everything uses SQL at some point. There is a free version for all the major database management systems (DBMS) (Microsoft, Oracle, MySQL, etc.).
Bond
Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
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