Hello, world! - My journey into programming
Hi there, I'm Abhishek, a BCA graduate from Kerala and pursuing MCA now. Starting from my childhood I always had a crush on the information technology field, and it always made me wonder how all this works. This constant passion and desire toward IT stuffs of mine that made me choose computer science in college.
Little bit 'c++' ; ---------------------------
When I joined the college I couldn't learn anything from the class, at this time, I met an android app named " solo learn". This app helped me learn the very basics .till that point I was completely clueless about what programming is about. this app gave me hope to learn this stuff. I started writing notes, reading, practicing, and most importantly didn't quit. at one point I thought I couldn't program and I should quit this. but then I started feeling like I could do it. This app is built in such an interesting way. There was an active community. it felt like Facebook, but only programmers. there used to be a quiz at the end of the session on a topic. there will be people making comments about the topic that just covered. it was very engaging and a lot like playing a game. This helped a lot of my friends who didn't have laptops at the time. There is an android app and a dedicated website to learn. Apart from the 'solo learn' app, I also used to watch the Newboston youtube, Chanel. They have awesome c++ tutorials. Other than these I did refer to many websites whenever there's confusion.
Sololearn : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details? id=com.sololearn
A little 'python' -----------------------------
For most people around the world, covid-19 was a bad thing, but honestly, it gives me a lot of time to work on my own. I learned a lot of stuff during the lockdown. I wasn't distracted, there was nothing else to. so I started learning python. It felt extremely easy at first when I started learning it. I started watching freecodecamp 4-hour python for beginners video. and it almost covered every basic stuff. then I started learning using a textbook called "Python Crash Course, 2nd Edition" by 'Eric Matthes', this book was so great. it contains all the essential lessons to get you started with python. it has
simple notes which are easy to understand and quick to revise. I made notes from that textbook. then I tried "Charles Russell Severance" -'python for everybody' courses from Coursera. it was great, it covers various aspects of python starting from very basics to web scraping. this is a suggested course to take, at the end of the session there will be a mandatory quiz for us to complete, only then we could proceed to the next session. this will ensure that we are learning stuff properly. when I was learning python I had a buddy to learn along with, even though we are not physically together, we both studied together. reading portions first, then we discuss the concept, then we do the exercise alone and share the code and compare each other's code. by doing this we got an idea of how to approach a problem from different angles. then we tried some online websites to practice python for a while.
To be continued... ---------------------------------
Then my mca career started just 3-4 months before. now I'm learning data structures using c. learning data structures in detail opened my mind. like how people already managed to build crazy constructs like this. data structures are like how we store our data using a program, data structures change according to our needs and occasions. we can achieve anything we want if we stop making excuses for ourselves. if want something important in our life we should rearrange our priorities accordingly and should invest more time in the thing that we want. then for sure, hard work will pay off. Don't wait for the perfect time to start learning anything. start learning something already. Even though I touched many different languages, I haven't mastered any. but I'm planning to learn bash in the near coming months and learn advanced python.
Resources I have used -------------------------------
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/python
https://nostarch.com/pythoncrashcourse2e
Sololearn : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details? id=com.sololearn
New Boston : https://www.youtube.com/playlist? list=PLAE85DE8440AA6B83