Programming Resources for Pseu

Hey, 

yeah, I wrote down some things that I wanted to send you. It might be a bit much if you're just starting out, so please don't get intimidated.

Regarding the building of websites, I would recommend that you don't overthink it. And don't build anything that is too fancy. When it comes to content, simplicity is king. Form should always follow function.

Check out these sites:

1) http://motherfuckingwebsite.com

2) http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com

3) https://bestmotherfucking.website

4) https://thebestmotherfucking.website

There is a lot of truth to these satirical websites. There are many things that most newbies don't think about, which makes most self-baked frameworks and websites horrible. Accessibility (think screen readers for blind people), differences in devices (think browsing on a TV / fridge / smartphone / smartwatch / tablet / laptop / 30'' inch desktop / etc.), and so on...

Further, doing HTML and CSS correctly can be hard. In my opinion, it doesn't even have to do much with programming, really, it's just annoying. The reason is that everything on the web evolves over time, different browsers support different standards, etc. Have a quick look at http://wtfhtmlcss.com/ to see what I mean. Before I forget: some other things that you will probably stumble over are bootstrap (getbootstrap.com), jQuery (jquery.com), and font awesome (fontawesome.com). You can think of these like building blocks that make many things easier.

So, what to do? As I've mentioned, I would recommend using existing frameworks to build websites. Wordpress comes to mind, but there is also Ghost, Joomla, Drupal, Squarespace, and plenty of other competitors. I really like Jekyll because it is free, quite simple, and caters to developers. Also, you can host it on GitHub (for free), so there's that. https://jekyllrb.com/

For static content, there is also Medium of course, but it tends to suck more and more, so I'm bullish on alternatives like telegra.ph - see https://telegra.ph/api - there are some others as well.

Alright, enough about website stuff.

Regarding programming: don't get hung up on the latest and greatest, and don't get hung up on what kind of language you use. Programming hasn't really changed since its inception, i.e. the underlying concepts haven't changed. That means that you will have to learn the basics at some point, i.e. computer science basics (logic, hardware, software, memory, some math, algorithms, data structures, etc.). I found this article to be quite good. It also has some pointers.

To actually learn how to code, you will have to get the hours in. You will actually have to code. Do it often, do it consistently, and don't give up. It's like learning an instrument or a new sport, or any other skill, really.

There are many sites that have all kinds of tutorials. I really like Khan Academy (khanacademy.org/computing) and I have heard good things about Codecademy (codecademy.com). There are plenty of others as well.

The easiest languages to start out with are probably Python and Ruby. JavaScript is fine too, I guess, but I wouldn't recommend it because as I've mentioned: I'm not a fan. Not all tutorials and guides are boring and conventional, btw. Here is a famous Ruby book/tutorial that is ... a bit different: https://poignant.guide

Let me close with something that I wish I would've known earlier: the tools you use make all difference. Get familiar with a powerful editor (I use vim-style editors myself, and am currently mostly using Atom). Use dotfiles. Automate everything you can. Use a powerful shell, something like ohmyzsh.

Once in a while, it really helps to read a book. "The Pragmatic Programmer" is a book I recommend often. There are many others, you'll have to pick and choose depending on what you'd like to learn. Also: Google and StackOverflow are your friends. At least 75% of programming is finding out how to do it (or how to do it right), i.e. googling. If you run into an error that doesn't make sense, google it. Chances are that someone else ran into the same error and asked a question on StackOverflow.

I hope that helps. I know it's a lot, so again: don't get intimidated. Programming is hard, but that's just the nature of the beast. It's hard for everyone.

Good luck,

Gigi