Expect to get stuck learning - or working with - any language. That is what programming is all about. It's like working on a puzzle. If you can take a local community college class, that would be great.

What you can also do is find a freelancer to guide you. They will be cheap for what you get and you will know if their hourly is worth it just on one or two lessons. Personally, I would avoid Indians and go with Vietnamese, Eastern Europeans and Russians. That's based on my experience outsourcing various projects. A lot of times, I not only asked freelancers to do something, but also asked them how they did particular things or what particular code did.

Codeacademy.org It's live instruction in Chicago. Worth it from what I've been told.

question -

I'd like to learn how to code. That said, I struggled with higher level algebra, and took no calculus at all. Should I even attempt learn to code, or are the skill sets the same?

i'm a c++ dev by day, and i've been working on getting some friends to learn some coding.

i've found the most success with python, and specifically http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ . Go through the exercises one by one. Its listed as "the hard way", but its very accessible to beginners and not hard at all for someone who knows a little software. There are a lot of resources out there that are much much harder for beginners. Do this in conjunction with cs101 course listed above.

for a beginner to learn programming, theres absolutely no reason to pick a specific language for the goal of, say developing an iphone app. Its much better to learn the fundamentals first in a language that is clean and accessible. If you can learn to code in one language, its very easy to learn another. (similar to poker, once u learn nlh, its pretty trivial to learn plo or razz, i mean simply in terms of knowing the rules of course. its arguably better to start in nlh since most consider it easier to learn and more enjoyable)

its not tough, give it a try (learnpythonthehardway !). i don't think it requires any real math knowledge or skill, it just requires you to be okay with logic. also an ever bigger speculative imo: if you can beat ssnl, then absolutely you can learn to code and will be pretty decent at it.

You probably struggled with algebra/calculus because you would get stuck on something and give up. (like most people) In that sense, programming will be the same. Programming is like an endless puzzle. Even the top programmers get stuck and think of solutions for days on end.

Hey AK87 I just started the udacity program as well. Funny this post is the reason I started the class had no clue it was you from VLP. You are moving back to the US from costa rica?
I'm charlie by the way, we hung out on my birthday down here.

OP,

I was / am pretty much in the same boat as you. Know i needed to move away from poker but the only thing i really had that was an advantage was some capital to invest / live off for a while. I'll give you a run down on my journey so far so you know what to expect.

Around middle of 2011 decided i wanted to learn to code, I'm an Australian living abroad and coding provided all the same flexibility poker does in terms of living arrangements / work hours etc. Did some online tutorials at lynda and chatted with some friends who code / run web businesses for a living. They gave me the same advice alot of people are giving in this thread, you need to build something. An e-commerce site, a membership site, a custom made blog, whatever. You can't just read a book or do heaps of tutorials and know how to code. It'll help a bit but the best way is to try and build something and then use google to figure out how.

In late Sept 2011 I decided i wanted to build an ecommerce site. My mum has had craft stores in Australia for years and so I decided to build an online store and put her products in it. We decided to give it a go for 2 years and if its going ok after that time we'll keep at it, otherwise we'll give up. Worst case scenario for me is i walk away after 2 years with nothing but having learnt a TON about coding / SEO / web business etc and could work for someone else if need be.

Whatever you build will never really be finished as you'll always be changing it and updating it and adding things to it but after 4 months of coding and 2 months of taking product photos (we have over 2000 individual products) we launched.

It's been 8 months since i sat down and did <?php echo "Hello World"; ?> and from there i now have an online craft shop. (Shameless link, i know).

Its built using php and obviously html, css, some javascript and a MySQL database. I had some really good people helping me, one who is a gun coder, he's been writing code for 10+ years and has been incredibly helpful from day one, just last night he help me setup my own server as im learning about that now, going to move away from shared hosting. The other is a good friend who has run a web business for 5+ years and knows a ton about layout, design, user experience etc.

If you can get a mentor or someone who you can ask questions to it's incredibly helpful, especially for the first 3-4 months while your learning the syntax and all the different built in functions whichever language you choose has. Once you get over what I'd call the "3 month hump" you'll be fine. I started 8 months ago, 2 months i was taking product photos and the last 2 months or so I've hardly been coding but when i do I hardly ask anyone any questions, can find most of my answers on google or can figure things out myself. That being said theres always something new to learn, from getting better at your chosen language, the learning other languages, to managing a server, to SEO, the list could go on forever.

I don't know anything about ruby or python so I can't really comment on them but php is easy enough to learn imo. Other posters who know php are advising other languages so maybe they'll be a better place to start.

Once you decide what you want to build have a look around online at different sites doing the same thing. If its ecommerce look at amazon, asos, ebay etc. Pick the things you like about those sites and then try and integrate them into your own site. For example i really liked the way asos does their product filtering (check it out here) so i built the same thing - (check out my version here).

SOOOOO, in answer to your questions;

1) If you can find someone you can hit up with questions that is best, after that it is google thats the best for finding answers to things. I found http://www.w3schools.com/ to be really good. When learning stuff i often forgot how to write things properly so would quickly look up simple answers on there. Tell you the truth i still forget and have to look things up, lol, esp mysql stuff.

2) Best way to learn is to build something, until you have an idea of something to build i think it's really hard to learn.

3) One thing that i find really helpful whenever im stuck is to break things down. For example that product filtering took me 2-3 days of trying to build it and getting absolutely nowhere, then i took a day off to figure out in English exactly what it is i needed to do to make it work one baby step at a time, after that it was actually pretty easy to put together. Think of each letter of code as one piece of lego and a website as the biggest lego thing you've ever seen. To build the big thing, you have to put each small piece into place one at a time, just focus on doing that and eventually you will make the big thing. (Hope that made sense).

The hardest part isn't learning syntax, its learning how to use the syntax to make something work.

If you've got any questions feel free to pm me.

Wow thanks a lot for that post jimmyhat.

That website looks really professional and clean, I like it a lot. Instant motivation in that post. I do have some questions for you, I'm actually driving to Vegas right now though, but I'll PM you my Skype and would like to pick your brain if you don't mind. Cheers.

For all the people who are talking about learning c++ as a first language - I think it is a horrible idea.

I started out with matlab - real easy to use, real powerful for certain tasks and teaches the basics of loops, if statements etc.

moved onto visual basic.NET for a short while before learning C# more solidly.

I feel that from learning c# i have been able to pick up java so much easier and it meant that when i started learning c++ i already had an understanding of the "C" style syntax.

I would recommend to anyone that C# would be an excellent choice for a first language if you are looking to move on towards a c++ environment.

My view might be skewed as I was given a copy of MS visual studio prof 2010 which is an awesome IDE.

C# in 24 hours

that is a good book to get started with.

I agree with this to a certain extent, however I would read a book/tutorials so you don't have to google things like for loops or how your code flows through execution.

Once a basic understanding is achieved, just go and try to program things.

Also learn MySql/postgresQL - very very simple to get to grips with and will be very important.

Just learn the most popular one: C, C++,C# or Java. Once you know one you'll have no problem switching to other and will cover a big market share of program languages. Forget about low level script languages like Python or Perl. I see C# or Java as the most pragmatic two.

pretty much what I was trying to say but just a lot more concisely put.

I would again stress that c++ and C will be very difficult as a first language. Also C is a procedural rather than object oriented.

Last sentence is so true.

C# is a solid place to start. I was a powershell scripter and it was cake to jump into C#.

Learn to code by building the project you've been dreaming about. This is probably the best advice I can give. It's boring and tedious to build shopping carts for fictitious bookstores, or whatever scenario your tutorial lays out. The value of being truly interested in what you're working on cannot be overstated.

As a self taught coder, my advice is to begin with PHP. It is MUCH easier to keep motivated and continue learning when you can create real things, very quickly, that actually work.

Also, PHP provides very good error messages in the recent versions. This is supremely helpful when you're first starting out.

If you're brand new and decide to go the PHP route, I'd say:

1. Download WAMPServer (If you use windows). WAMP = Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP stack. Easy to install, allows you to use your computer as its own web server, no need to upload code to test as you write it.

2. Download Notepad++. It's a fantastic text editor that automatically colors text as you're coding (it recognizes many languages). I honestly don't know if I would have learned to code without this feature. There are other text editors, I'm just partial to Notepad++.

3. Use Stackoverflow when you get stuck. You likely won't even need to post, just search your problem. There are very few (if any) beginning PHP problems that haven't been answered there.

4. This book was helpful to me for learning PHP:
http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Web-...8145117&sr=8-1
There are countless tutorials and articles online.

5. Go get started.

Last note: The endless debates about which language to choose can be a distraction. Pick the one that's right for you. Paul Graham absolutely crushes this topic here:
http://paulgraham.com/avg.html

great post but especially the above. it's important to be working on something even if you don't exactly have the knowledge to build the complete idea. otherwise you can go on for some time thinking you can't so you shouldn't.