You're right in that to be a good programmer it takes experience - too learn how to program fast... how dedicated are you for the next week or two?

First thing I would suggest is determining where you want to focus. What do you want your projects to be - PC based, web based, iphone apps...

Then determine a language that you want to focus on, C#, C++, PHP, etc...

You mentioned that you wanted to be better at communicating with outsources. Maybe start by finding out which languages they are using and research some software design documents that are for programs in that language. Design docs are essential to any major programming effort and they outline the entire program in layman's terms to help communicate between the programmer and the design staff.

All programming languages have the same basic syntax when it comes to structure it is the implementation of the specific language that makes them different (that may be over-simplification).

Find the language you want to learn then do a search for tutorials, there are hundreds of tutorials for beginners. Dive in and follow the tutorials and you'll be on your way.

Hi jvman, welcome to the forum!

I appreciate your goal and I think you're asking the wrong question to get there. You should really ask, how do I quickly become a great manager of programmers, or a great buyer of programming services?

Compare it to a restaurant. The restaurant manager needs a basic understanding of what happens in the kitchen, but the manager doesn't need to be a good cook.

You start with the level of skill you need in the kitchen. If you have a fast food franchise, you need teenagers who can follow basic step by step directions out of the corporate operations manual. If you have a luxury steak house, you need a chef who has creativity to come up with whole new types of menus and who can supervise a large operation.

There are some basic operations that apply in either kitchen: heat, cool, divide, combine, mix, clean as you go, safe food handling. Beyond that, the high-end restaurant will have more specialized stations.

Same thing with programming. Every program interacts with its environment, gets configuration settings and data from somewhere, might store and retrieve information, does processing and generates output.

The fast food manager should be able to fill in if the kitchen is short-staffed. A fast food level of programming might be to connect to an email account, scan for any messages with "payment" in the header, look in the same place in each message for the number after the word "amount," generate a total and send a summary total email once a day to another address. If you learned a little bit of PHP you should be able to crank out a program like this within weeks, although it might not be elegant, efficient, or easy to maintain.

A gourmet level of programming might be to have a complete system that does its own email handling, connects to multiple bank accounts, sends payments to vendors when balances are large enough, checks if you have enough money for a vacation and if so, finds the best price from five different travel sites and books your ticket to Tahiti.

It's fine if the programming manager can't write this program directly, just as the steakhouse manager is not really expected to pitch in on the five-course meal.

A truly expert software developer might spend less than a third of their time writing code. Just like the chef, they need to coordinate with other people and design the system. Junior assistants can crank out one basic result after another once they are told exactly what to do.

I recommend Microsoft's "small basic" as a good little introduction to coding. It's at Small Basic. Their community helps each other with things like tic-tac-toe in 20 lines of code. This would at least get you to the point that you don't put your tie in the soup.

Beyond that, study of system analysis would really get you a lot further towards your goals than study of coding.

We've had a recent flurry of discussions about outsourcing. Look for the ones that have specific how-to advice about what the client should provide to get the best results from any outside coders.

Chris

There's quite a lot of demand for Ruby on Rails developers
and it's said to be relatively easy to learn.

If you want to make money in programming, perhaps look
around at the want ads and see what sort of programmers
businesses need to work on their projects.

Of course it all depends on what your goals are. If you
want to develop Iphone aps you'll have to learn specific
stuff to that platform, for instance.

I learned by Lynda.com's PHP tutorials. You can go from a complete noob to being able to do some decent scripts in php in a few days (~22 hours of videos). if you pay attention and work along with the videos. PHP with MySQL Essential Training & PHP with MySQL Beyond the Basics are the two I'd watch. Along with that I would get the "PHP Cookbook" and "Object-Oriented PHP" books from Amazon.com or some book store. Once you do this, you should be able to pick up just about any C based language very easily. (C,C++,Java, ActionScript,Objective-C, etc)

I would watch the 1st Lynda video (essentials) if you know you want to continue learning then I'd order the two book, and while your waiting for the books watch the other Lynda video. I would just get 1 month's subscription to Lynda you don't really need the example code, as they show you what to do in the videos, and you can copy it from there.

The cookbook book shows good coding standard examples. This is an invaluable reference book. The Object-Oriented PHP book teaches good coding standards which will help you with any object oriented language. You should get into the habit while your new to programming to writing your code in Objects VS Procedurally..

You basically need to learn a languages syntax and then use your head to figure out the process of writing that syntax to make it to its thing. Once you learn one language you can fairly easily learn another.


I hope this helps. PHP is the language I'd suggest to a new comer, since it's easy to use, works on just about every system, powerful, and will teach basic building blocks for further development.

-Brad

Shout outs to customertools for suggesting Lynda's books.. I think they were great...

Me personally, I started on my long and interesting road with PHP by reading an older version of this tutorial:

ahh crumbs.. it's not letting me post it.. anyway do a google search for 'webmonkey php mysql tutorial'

What I like about the example here is it goes through every step, I absolutely *hate* examples that assume certain knowledge or skip steps.

If you decide to go with PHP feel free to add me on AIM or Yahoo (on my profile) happy to kick on a hint here and there!

Well to start first is to know what are your objectives.
You should determine what kind of language you should focus into.
Is it web application, mobile or a desktop?

programming is very broad and quite complicated but if you're really into it
you will learn fast! goodluck for a new career.

Try to download e-books. It may help you.

go to w3schools , i started to learn php there , then make programs for fun , try things you will learn but it will take time and paitence

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I want to do the same thing. I found a site that has hyper next studio in it. tigabyte.com It has several pdf for download along with the suite for creating your own programs. I have emailed them several times for assistance and Malcolm always responds withing 24 hours. You really should check this site out. They are helping me with some traffic generating software.

Hello Jvman,

Thats very wonderful,that you want to learn how to program, for someone that doesnt know much about programming.
Members here might suggest you many dvd's, ebooks, tutorials etc but there is something i would like to suggest to you.


You see, if you dont learn how to fall, you cant learn how to walk.
If you dont learn how to read, you wont be able to write.
Learning how to program is a philosophy.
Every Programming Language has its own philosophy and based on that philosophy you can create a program.
Some programming languages are difficult to learn because they got a big philosophy.
The most important thing that you need to do is to convince yourself you want to learn.After all, if you dont fall, you wont walk.

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As an experienced programmer. I would recommend books published by Wrox. I have used them to learn new languages. They have EVERY language covered from beginner to professional skill levels. They don't have a lot of fluff just good coding advise and examples. You can even download the code examples for every book they publish from their website to work with (or to look at even if you didn't buy the book). Good luck in your new endeavor to learn how to program!

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visit phpvideotutorials[dot]com for PHP lesson. Basic Course isfree but advance course are paid one. His lessons are good. you might learn something valuable from him.