A Month Of Programming

[dinc]

My mom, being the fine and dedicated mother she is, gave me a month off of school to learn "programming". My dad, being the computer expert he is, recommended HTML, PHP, and knowledge of MYSQL (and Perl if I have time).

Today is the first day of this month, and my goal is to acquire enough knowledge to take free lance, online jobs. I'm wondering if you fine folks know of any good forums for programming questions, tutorials, or just anything else in general.

Ah, it's good to be home schooled.

[Dave Kaminski]

Lynda.com if you're into the design side.

w3schools or VTC are great for the programming side.

I would start with HTML (and Dreamweaver if you plan on using a GUI), then move onto XML/CSS for increased design functionality on HTML.

PHP is great for building free dynamic sites. MySQL is also extremely powerful in that area.

Flash is a great touch to add for design purposes, but for any and all of these you may need more than a month to get functioning on your unless you're busting your ass learning this stuff.

ASP.NET & VB.NET/C#.Net are very powerful as well. You can get free, learning versions of the development platforms from Microsoft (Microsoft SQL Server Express, & Visual Studio Express (VB.NET Express))

VB is easier to learn if you're starting, and C# is extremely robust. If you're feeling courageous, try to take on C#. If you want a strong foundation you might want to stick with VB.NET at first. To learn the .NET way instead of the PHP/MySQL way (which is the Open Source route) go to LearnVisualStudio.net, it's an excellent site and has tons of videos. Aside from learning CSS/HTML that site will teach you just about everything you need to know to create extremely robust applications.

[dinc]

Okay, this is why I post in forums. Lol, I didn't even know about XML or CSS, and they seem to be pretty essential (or CSS at least) if you want your website to look halfway decent. I have stumbled upon w3schools (it's a bit hard not to) and I'm going through the HTML section now. I should be done in an hour or two, and then I can get on to CSS.... Is XML even commonly used?

I think I'll just stick with web based programming this month. I was going to learn C++, but my dad said that isn't big in the free lance world. I checked and he was right. Besides...it would be hell to learn in a short time. My uncle learned it in a week, but then again...he's a genius.

I'm not even sure what ASP.NET & VB.NET/C#.Net are even used for... I'll look into though.


Thanks.

[Euragios]

SitePoint : New Articles, Fresh Thinking for Web Developers and Designers is a very good community for your website design/programming and other, related stuff.

Good luck!

[Dave Kaminski]

You've got the freelance thing down if that's what you want to do! It's an excellent path and will be a blast. Learning skills and applying them is amazing, and building something from nothing is also an awesome experience.


I think you're currently thinking "freelance programmer." if you want to think "solutions" or "consultant" you might wanna go for the bigger stuff like C#, .NET and such.

[Niki]

I would highly recommend Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

Ruby is a programming language, and Rails is a Framework for creating websites.

A great book is The Pragmatic Bookshelf | Learn to Program . It will teach basic programming concepts and show them with ruby. Their book "Agile Web Development With Rails" is THE book on programming ruby on rails.

[Dave Kaminski]

tobyhede, the Tech mod, is a Ruby on Rails guy

I'm am ASP/javascript/vbscript/flash programmer by day. I'm training on .NET now

Niki that book looks great! I'm getting it for my friend who wants to learn!

[tobyhede]

Yes, I am all about the Ruby on Rails. :P

I have also done a lot of PHP programming.

sitepoint.com has great articles, books and some really useful forums.

And I second the recommendation for w3schools.

[aussieNickuss]

If you're learning HTML for the first time.....avoid starting with table layouts!

I started building sites just by using tables from the beginning and when it came time to go over to the XHTML and CSS type layout....it was a hard habit to kick....I kept reverting to a table layout when I came to something in CSS that I didn't understand. If you go in knowing XHTML and CSS from the start, then you'll spend more time developing your skills, rather than learning all over again.

[Vanessa]

I'll also like to give a hat tip to Chris Pine, his website had the original version of Learn to Program and it's helped me learn to program:

Learn to Program, by Chris Pine If you want to sneak a peek at what the expanded book looks like, have a gander at his website.

Lynda.com was also great to learn the ins and outs of design software, I really like their books too, easy to follow along and practical examples. Their site have an all you can learn subscription for 25/month. not bad for the price of one book!

For more on the programming side, O'Reilly Safari has an online collection of books available for unlimited monthly access to all their books is 43 bucks and if you do 10 books a month its 22 bucks. Give it a search and see what you'd like to learn about. I'd recommend XHTML, CSS JavaScript, PHP, MySql, then Ruby on Rails if you'd like to do freelance work.

You can accomplish alot in a month's worth of learning!

[Dave Kaminski]

If you feel like you'd rather design, try to focus on Flash and Photoshop.

I would stretch your programming learning out way more than a month, as programming takes a while to learn since observation and trial/error help to beat a path in your mind.

[dinc]

I think I'll just stick with web based programming this month, and I fully intend to keep on learning after one month, but I want to see how much I can get done...Apparently not much. I've got HTML, but CSS is kicking my ass all the way from here to cyberland. Why do you need margins if you have padding? Why do you need either at all? What's the fricking use of an 'inline' element? Maybe I'll look somewhere other than w3schools.


I took a look at Lynda, and I CAN afford the $25...but it's still $25, and that' quite alot for me to pay up. My dad already bought me a php/mysql book, and his financial support ends there :P. I'll think about it...

Today, I fooled around a lot with some basic HTML to get the hang of it, and I've started messing with some CSS, but that's all I've done. You can see my results and let me know what I'm doing wrong (I'll post it sometime today)..*groan of desolation*. I'm gonna go get some Ihop now.

[Niki]

Padding and margin are both different things. What I always did to see what the effect was of different styles I just gave every element on my webpage a different color, that's good for seeing what just exactly changed when you have a padding of 10, or a margin of 10. You can see the difference then. An if you don't see the use of inline elements, you don't have to use them, as long as you get the result you wanted, on the most popular browsers. Css looks hard at first, but once you get the hang of it, you will be loving it. Every peace has it's value.

[Tayrak]

CSS seems like a bear but once you get it, you won't turn back. Absolutely use colors like Niki said. I also used borders to keep track of where everything is.

Give yourself some time too. I know you're smart but this is a lot of info.

And don't forget to test in different browsers. I had my pages rolling happily along in IE, did another site, worked great in IE and then someone pointed out a mistake in Firefox, which I didn't have on this puter. It wasn't a huge deal but when I tested my new site, it totally broke in Firefox . It's all fixed now

Tayrak

[Dave Kaminski]

*Pops in the Lynda CSS 2 Essential Training CD*

I need to listen to you guys - I'm way slacking on my CSS since I focus on Flash more. I need to broaden my horizons.

[coder]

Before doing programming, wouldn't you want to learn basics on handling information?

database theory and practice : Dealing with databases in practice

Here is a set of tutorials on MySQL:

MySQL DBA : Common tasks you have to master in your work as a MySQL DBA.

and a forum:

Database Design Resource Forum: - Index

[JeremyW]

Originally Posted by Dave Kaminski

You've got the freelance thing down if that's what you want to do! It's an excellent path and will be a blast. Learning skills and applying them is amazing, and building something from nothing is also an awesome experience.


I think you're currently thinking "freelance programmer." if you want to think "solutions" or "consultant" you might wanna go for the bigger stuff like C#, .NET and such.

Do you have any tips for freelancers on where to find work?

[coder]

There is a place called Rent A Coder: How Software Gets Done -- Home of the worlds' largest number of completed software projects

[Dave Kaminski]

Coder - that rent a coder page is amazing.

Thanks.

[coder]

Dave,

It sure is: I have used it on several occasions, with very good results (and a couple not-so-good...).

Just make sure you pick a coder with a good track record. Or, if you want projects to work on, document your skills.

[Dave Kaminski]

I could outsource a LOT of my own work on there and make some SERIOUS cash; haha, and this is thread jacking, so here's my contribution:

If you REALLY want a good way to learn how to program, go to that site, find a project you would potentially want to do in your language, and FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO IT!

Honestly, that's a great way to learn.

[BChris]

You should learn basic topics like arrays, classes, files and basic things before actually learn a language because that way is much easier. I recomend GameDev.net - all your game development needs the forums are ecxelent. Right now Im learning PHP/Mysql so i decided to start making wordpress templates to get a little practice.

[colbycheeze]

I randomly quit my job one day to learn Flash because I wanted to make a game like the ones I was playing on armorgames.com etc...

Flash developers are a rare commodity and if you can learn Flash you are guaranteed a good job.

It took me about 3 weeks to learn from scratch and I had already built a quick game and made 3000 for it. I also got a job working for a freelance company to make money in the meantime while making games.

I recommend flash because it is in very high demand, is super fun to play with, and very easy to learn.

some books that have helped me (you'll have to google them)

Oreilly Essential Actionscript 3.0
Oreilly actionscript 3.0 Cookbook
Oreilly Actionscript 3.0 Design Patterns
Advanced Actionscript 3 with Design Patterns
Head First - Design Patterns (this is in Java, but is the BEST book ive read of them all)

Those there can last you about a month or two if you just read here and there. I recommend just creating demo applications for each new thing that you learn. It is super easy to learn if you do it that way and just keep track of everything you do so you can reference it later.

Good luck!

[JeremyW]

Originally Posted b