Where to Start with Code | Hacker News Reader

Where to Start with Code

2 pointsguest__user5 comments

Hello HN -

I am an artist, born in 1984, which means i'll be 35 years old this year. I taught myself html css and was able to make some rudimentary websites and modifications to my tumblr as a sort of gateway into css, html and code. Recently i made some twitterbots that i was able to copy and paste and cobble together stuff and deploy to heroku! using python and some other stuff (im sure not at all in best practice) and run those for a bit. I often find myself wanting to write programs (for example a scraper for a website) and know enough of the language to find the code on github or look through questions on stackoverflow, but i feel like i am quickly out of depth; as i want to customize or go a bit futher; or sometimes i feel like i need some basic knowledge that i don't have. i was wondering if anyone here has advice as to learning code or as an artist (entrepreneur) how to go about working with developers and coders on very small projects. thanks so much

Simply write code and learn the hard way. I can tell you from experience that copy and pasting does not bode well with the learning process.

You have to make a significant effort in order to learn how code works in different scenarios.

Anyone can take Google Translate and talk to a Chinese person in a broken, poorly translated language. But to learn Chinese (programming) as an actual language requires commitment and determination.

Once you get over this hurdle, the rest should be much easier to manage and understand.

thanks for the reply; i do speak different languages! just no programming languages :) yes, i think thats what i was somehow trying to convey, that copying and pasting isnt sustainable and where to go from here; and maybe why? i realize from lurking here for years that most people on here seem to be highly skilled or at least have working knowledge of different programming languages, and maybe im wondering, is this how it works? you just do stuff the wrong way, get stuck, get unstuck, think its working, its not, etc etc, until you just learn how to do it the right way?

Yes. And also, keep working on projects that are relevant to yourself. Even the smallest project to fetch something or to index a specific data type. Little steps like this will soon start bearing fruit as you realise you need this knowledge for the bigger projects you are working on.

Courses and tutorials can be fun, but personal projects (goals if you want to call it that) make you learn things more efficiently.

35 shiiit that means I'm going to be in my 40's

big if true

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