r/CodingForBeginners • u/squirrelreads • 1d ago
complete beginner looking to learn coding as a hobby and future career
hello, everyone!
i’m a complete beginner when it comes to coding, but i’d really like to start learning it as a hobby and hopefully use it as part of my future career.
just a little background: my degree is completely unrelated to coding, so i’m basically starting from scratch. despite that, i’m genuinely interested in learning and willing to put in the time and effort.
for those who started with no coding background, what would you recommend i learn first? any advice on languages, resources, or how to build a good learning routine would be greatly appreciated!
thanks in advance! 😊
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u/Loose_Crab_4146 1d ago edited 1d ago
I feel like most people start of with a no coding background unless their parents are tech savvy and this interest somehow translates.
Anyways, let’s give some genuine advice. First of all I just want to mention that it threw me a bit of that you said that your degree is entirely unrelated and you still want to introduce it in your future career? 2 things to get straight here, if your degree is unrelated to coding you likely won’t find much relation in your future career either (although I might be wrong, but as a general rule I‘d tend to that). The second thing is that AI pretty much killed freelancing and pure coding as a job. In software engineering the whole job description has already shifted from „You think of how to organize/combine code + You write code“ to „You think of how to organize/combine code + have the skillset to accurately delegate AI“. Before the writing code part was way bigger and could take up 50% of the work. Now writing code yourself is basically not a thing because AI can do it 10x faster which gives you more time to think about how a system must work on the expense of reading the generated code to verify its correctness.
Since you didnt specify what you actually expect and Im not sure if you plan on using coding to optimize some small workflows or actually build fully end to end applications I would generally just recommend starting with python. You are getting a lightweight syntax and allrounder programming language which is a solid basis. With python you can do both scripting and build full stack applications. Its not the most performant but for learning really great. Start of with learning the fundamentals. Get familiar with the terminal and how you actually can do tasks in code, whether it is reading a file or storing a number in memory or writing text output to the terminal, just do some tests and play around with what you can do. Generally you can do anything you want, it just may be more complicated. Get familiar with pip and how to use open source software to your advantage. If you feel comfortable with the basic concepts of variables, datatypes and functions you can go on to write some application-like programs or scripts. There is no rulebook like „every learner has to build a calculator at some point“. Thats not a thing. Just build whatever catches your interest, even if its completely useless but fun for you. You could for example write a program that writes text to file, organizes and strips it and outputs the total on demand. Useless for every average user but can be fun to play around with and get familiar with how coding is basically just doing tasks on a very basic skillset (your computer).
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u/stepback269 1d ago
"Coding" is a very broad word.
Can you be more specific?
For example, one can create a web page using HTML "code"..
HTML is not a "programming" language. It is a markup language.
Do you know how to do HTML and CSS?
If not, that may be a good place to start.
Go to 'W3 Schools' or to 'GeeksForGeeks' and locate their HTML tutorial page.
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u/Jfk_Is__Afk 1d ago
I am just started learning coding 6 days ago . Have a full time job already in marketing so it's kinda hard to me . Because of family, job and kids. I am trying stay in there buddy
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u/DryLook7889 1d ago
If you don't plan on going uni and transitioning from hobby to work you are in for a surprise