Question for ya

i learned the "wrong way" as they call it; which means i did not take any online course or any such fuwee. although, i might have missed out some legit education that i dont know about.

at first i was into learning html through a web site called angelfire. they have like free web pages; so i signed up but i wasn't too fond of the auto generated pages they had; i played around with the html. it wasn't difficult at all. but anyway.. i started learning javascript... THEN i came upon a little forum coded in PHP. i was amazed at how easy the code was to read. at the time i was just learning CGI and buildling small scripts like guestbooks and counters. i started up learning PHP and MySQL right then and there because i was so into coding. hmm... and now here i am, doing freelance and just helping people out for freeeeeeeeee 99. i was also learning ASP at the time also. i forgot where i was going with this...

i dunno bout logical but i can see the code in my head; how it will output. its like if i type out a couple dots like so:

. . . . - . . - . . - . . .

music producers might take that and interprete it as a string to a beat; while i just see dots. anyway, that's how i see it.

you won't be a great programmer right off the bat. just read, code, sleep, code, read, debug, code, sleep, read, code, etc. long hours of coding is the best. you won't even see the light of day. i think it's best if you have a project to work on; like a forum or guestbook or something of that magnitude.

i dunno about online courses and how they educate peoples.

kthx.. this rant has been brought to you by s0da.

The only way I really learn is by doing something for real, real code with a real deadline. So find yourself a project (there are lots of opensource projects out there) that codes something you are interested in, in a language that you want to learn and go for it.

Remember that learning the language is only a small part of it, you need to understand networking, file systems, memory management, databases, version control systems, text editors... I've worked with lots of developers who believed that knowing a specific langauge and very little else was enough, but that is like knowing how to drive but not knowing the rules of the road.

Free website monitoring

s0da ~ lol ~ you're so funny ~ I can't see things like you can, so obviously you do see things in a much more "logical" way than me. I find it amazing how you learned. I would think one would have to go to some type of tech school, but I guess you proved me wrong It's great to be wrong I look forward to learning here!

texpositor ~ I barely know HTML that well, so I couldn't dream of doing a project of some sort. I joined here because I want to learn the basics and use them as a foundation (obviously) and then proceed from there.

Thanks for adding that second paragraph, cause I know there's tons more to coding than the code itself. You just confirmed it form me, but I had no idea it involved that much :eek:

i strive to be great at everything i want to be. i see these graphic designers with their nifty web sites and i'm so amazed; so i learn by trial and error on how to do they're techniques. very much like art i'd say. i had trouble doing smiley icons once... now i can do them pretty well, and my web designs were horrible. i tried my hand at CSS/DIV type designs but that was just too dull for me. plus, it was pretty much retarded; since you have to place alot of CSS to comply with each and every freakin browser. so sad...

oh my point? i have forgotten!

Have you tried http://www.w3schools.com/ ? Its actually a pretty good site - I learnt CSS there.

I learnt HTML by looking at the source code of sites and trying to make sence of it.

I learned by reverse-engineering my classmates stuff (he was about 6mths to a year ahead of me)...he didn't like it.

I then went to webmonkey.com *now defunct* to learn things
I found w3.org, and started doing my own research on syntax and errors, and learning the new stuff as it came out.

Buy a book, though; or take a class. It's' much easier. I took a class for VB .Net...I feel like a pro, lol.

In my case, lol, it's probably that my mind is so logical. That and I work at it every single day, reading, looking at the code of others, experimenting and working. I never stop learning, and I cannot afford to coast for a minute, my clients keep me on my toes.