ALRIGHT SINCE YOU ASKED FOR IT HERE'S MY GUIDE ON HOW YOU CAN PROGRAMMING SCRATCH

ALRIGHT SINCE YOU ASKED FOR IT HERE'S MY GUIDE ON HOW YOU CAN PROGRAMMING SCRATCH I'm going to take all of the experiences that I've picked up and learnings along my journey as well as all the advice that I've given to other software engineers who have gone on to work for big tech companies and even start their own. This is going to be a longer video, so save it so you can come back to it. And a disclaimer that if you've got the TikTok attention span, this video probably isn't for you. So here goes. Let's start off by laying out a hard truth. Learning how to code is a completely different journey to becoming a software engineer. Becoming a software engineer of course requires you learning how to code, but it also requires a dozen other things, each with their own particular learning path. This is really important because essentially at the beginning, what you want to do is focus on the task at hand, which is to learn programming. Maybe down the line you might want to become a software engineer, but if your goal is to learn programming to give it a try, understand that it has a different learning path, which I'm going to walk you through now. The first thing that you need to start off with is a programming language. When you build software, essentially what you're doing is writing instructions in a particular programming language your computer, Mac and machine turn those instructions into software. Software that runs as an application on your desktop or software that run on web servers, otherwise known as websites. The point is, it all starts off with one programming language. Now at this stage you don't want to focus on mastering the programming language. The most important thing at this stage is not the programming language, it's changing the way you think and solve problems. And when we talk about problems, we don't mean real world problems. We mean the problems involved in constructing a software to solve a real world problem. It requires a paradigm of thinking. You're essentially thinking in the language of the machine. This sounds cryptic, but the point is you don't need to master a particular programming language at this stage. So what language would I recommend? Python or JavaScript is my go-to especially for a beginner to avoid decision fatigue and to save you a couple of hours of scrolling and research. Pick Python. Now that's out of the way, the question is how can you use Python to write your first program? Now you can pick up a Python programming book, buy a course, or even follow along a YouTube video teaching Python. Any one of these is fine. A lot of this depends on how you learn best. And while it might seem like the case, there is no right answer. I remember one of my friends at Google learnt JavaScript just by reading the docs. No course, no book. But that doesn't necessarily mean that's the right way to do it. If you prefer visual learning and you like someone to explain things to you, then a follow along YouTube video works perfectly. If you want a structure to be given to you along with resources and learning materials, then you can pick up a course, find a resource that works for you. But ultimately, you just want one that will help you learn Python. You can of course learn this for free on good websites like Code Academy. Check those out and of course, there's a really good book called Automating the Boring Stuff with Python. I've even made some videos on YouTube going through the exercises in this book. Once you've found the resource that you like, the next thing is to start writing code. Now the resource itself is going to give you practice problems. It might be easier to do this, but make sure you don't skip those. Reading the chapters of a programming book doesn't mean you've learned programming. You need to actually practice the problems that are given to you. Once you've built up a good flavor for solving problems and practically what that means is you're not Googling or asking ChatGPT every 10 minutes or so when you're solving a particular problem in Python, but instead you're relying on your intuition, learning and experience, you've reached a pretty decent stage and it's time to move on to the next step. This is the final point. You need to come up with an idea of something that you want to build. Now this can get tricky and you can find many ideas online and you can even go on my TikTok page and other TikTok pages to look at programming project ideas. But I highly recommend that you think about a problem that affects you. Maybe it's something small like sending an automated message for a WhatsApp business or building a Telegram bot that will notify you the next time your favorite trainers are back in stock. Think about an idea or problem that affects you. The reason why this is important is because if you care about this problem, it's going to give you the motivation to push you to work on that problem. And by the end of it, you're going to feel really good because you've built something that you yourself find useful. And of course, you can also tell your friends about it. These are all the essential steps that you need to get started to learning programming. If you found this helpful, follow for more.