All you need to be a software developer!!

This article is a drive-through introduction to just enough programming concepts to get you from zero to a basic script.

Perhaps, this article is for:

· Those who are interested in programming, but confused on how to get started.

· people who work directly with coders and want to understand the nuts and bolts of what they do;

· Those who are starting their Computer Science journey and want a 100-level primer in a nutshell;

· people who have seen programmers on TV and also listens to them on podcast and are curious to know what they’re doing day and nights.

· people who have passion for technology and want to know how things is being construct.

· people who want to start this as a career despite the department or what they do.

First of all: take a nerve. Please understand that you need to focus while reading this, your mind should be here.

One request for you, if you don’t understand something, please highlight it and leave a comment so I can make it clearer. I’m an obsessive editor and I want this to be a smooth read.

Are you ready? then, Let’s get started.

What do you understand by the word “Programming?”

Programming is the process of taking an algorithm and encoding it into a notation, Computer science is not the study of programming. Programming, however, is an important part of what a computer scientist does. Programming is often the way that we create a representation for our solutions. Therefore, this language representation and the process of creating it becomes a fundamental part of the discipline.

Let understand the terminology of the above definitions.

Algorithm: In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an unambiguous specification of how to solve a class of problems. Algorithms can perform calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning tasks. So generally, any action takes to accomplish a task is known as “Algorithm”.

Example of Algorithm is calling a friend on the telephone then which steps will follow?

Input: The telephone number of your friend.

Output: None

Steps:

1. Pick up the phone and listen for a dial tone

2. Press each digit of the phone number on the phone

3. If busy, hang up phone, wait 5 minutes, jump to step 2

4. If no one answers, leave a message then hang up

5. If no answering machine, hang up and wait 2 hours, then jump to step 2

6. Talk to friend

7. Hang up phone

Assumptions:

• Step 1 assumes that you live alone and no one else could be on the phone.
• The algorithm assumes the existence of a working phone and active service.
• The algorithm assumes you are not deaf or mute.
• The algorithm assumes a normal corded phone.

Encoding: is the process of converting data from one form to another. While “encoding” can be used as a verb, it is often used as a noun, and refers to a specific type of encoded data. There are several types of encoding, including image encoding, audio and video encoding, and character encoding.

Notation: is a system of graphics or symbols, characters and abbreviated expressions, used (for example) in artistic and scientific disciplines to represent technical facts and quantities by convention.

Before I begin teaching you how to start programming, it’s first useful to discuss why you would want to learn on how to program. There are lots of good reasons why you should learn how to code. Here are a few of them:

Programming is a skill that is in high demand in the technology industry

Jobs as a coder can allow you to work wherever you want. All you need is a computer and the internet!

Programming is a necessary skill to be involved in one of the most cutting-edge job fields currently available

Many of the most exciting opportunities in emerging industries today are in the cryptocurrency and AI space. Programming is crucial for both.

Programming is both challenging and worthwhile. You’ll be amazed at what you’re able to create after just a small time spent learning to code.

The skills you learn will be relevant in the future. The tech industry is only going to grow!

Jobs that use a specialist skill like programming are often very well paid.

You don’t need a degree to learn how to code. You can get started without any college/university debt!

Writing programs (or programming) is a very creative and rewarding activity. You can write programs for many reasons, ranging from making your living to solving a difficult data analysis problem to having fun to helping someone else solve a problem. This articles assumes that everyone needs to know how to program, and that once you know how to program you will figure out what you want to do with your newfound skills.

Tools

A programmer’s toolbox typically consists of a few things:

· A computer.

· An internet connection. You need an Internet connection so you can use Google. When you don’t know how to do.

· A code editor (or an IDE, which is a code editor on steroids).

· A compiler or interpreter. This is a program that reads your code, tries to find mistakes so it can bug you about them, gathers your code into a nice little package, and then passes it on to the computer to execute.

· A good pair of headphones. These help you ignore people so you can focus.

Programming is breaking of one big impossible task into several very small possible tasks. Now that you have all the tools, we will try to turn you into a person who is skilled in the art of programming. In the end you will be a programmer — perhaps not a professional programmer, but at least you will have the skills to look at a data/information analysis problem and develop a program to solve the problem.

In a sense, you need two skills to be a programmer:

• First, you need to know the programming language — you need to know the vocabulary and the grammar. You need to be able to spell the words in this new language properly and know how to construct well-formed “sentences” in this new language.
• Second, you need to “tell a story”. In writing a story, you combine words and sentences to convey an idea to the reader. There is a skill and art in constructing the story, and skill in story writing is improved by doing some writing and getting some feedback. In programming, our program is the “story” and the problem you are trying to solve is the “idea”.

As you progress through the rest of the article, don’t be afraid if the concepts don’t seem to fit together well the first time. When you were learning to speak, it was not a problem for your first few years that you just made cute gurgling noises. And it was OK if it took six months for you to move from simple vocabulary to simple sentences and took 2–3 more years to move from sentences to paragraphs, and a few more years to be able to write an interesting complete short story on your own.

Programming languages

A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you’ve already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen.

Paul Graham

There are thousands of programming languages in the world. Many of them are dumb and useless. You can have a long and happy career only knowing three or four — but don’t worry, this isn’t as hard as learning three or four human languages.

Programming languages are often described by their paradigm, which is a way of categorizing the kinds of features they have. For example, JavaScript is the language that all web browsers run, and possibly the most popular programming language in the world. It has a diverse feature set; I might say that JavaScript supports imperative, structured, object-oriented, and event-driven paradigms. And you might say I’m a pretentious geek.

Here are nine tips and resources to set you off on the right foot.

1. Get a Mentor: This is the person that will motivate you a lot, gives you orientation on how your dream will comes through. Indeed, you need someone to do that, though am also your mentor as you read this book.

2. Choose the Right Language: As I said earlier that there are over 100 types of programming, you will be confused on which one you should go for that is why your mentor will be of help. He will instruct and guild you on the best to go for.

3. Grab Some Free Programming Books: Any programming book you can access to is acceptable, which will make you learn faster as what your mentor instructs you.

4. Take a Coding Course: Take courses online such as codeacademy, W3schools, freecodecamp and many of them to straighten your learning ability, and to make you get prepare anytime

5. Use Free Online Training Sites: if you don’t understand some code or you want to create an application but you don’t understand how to start it’s a nice and good idea to ask through different websites as you know that you can’t cram be cramming codes. Just understand what you need at the moment of the problem.

6. Start Small (and Be Patient): Be patience for your code, there will be a time you will be very frustrate about your code that is not execute. Just be calm, leave it for a while and you come back for it.

7. Try a Kids App: When you understand some basic functions of a particular language then, is very important to use to create applications. If you need more help, then you use the above steps.

8. Explore: This is very important aspects of the tips, most developer design but keep it for themselves, whenever you design some application its very good for you to let people know about it. This will make people know what you do and give any opportunity out for you.

9. Teach others: if you are chance to teach others, the newbies in programming will look up to you teach them whenever they need your help.

10. Collaborate: it’s now time for you to collaborate and communicate to other expert, this will improve you on how to communicates through code.

Conclusion

By now, I should congratulate you “Welcome to the world of developer” Usually when you are learning your first programming language, there are a few wonderful “Ah Hah!” moments where you can look up from pounding away at some rock with a hammer and chisel and step away and see that you are indeed building a beautiful sculpture.

If something seems particularly hard (especially when dealing with errors), there is usually no value in staying up all night and staring at it. Take a break, take a nap, have a snack, explain what you are having a problem with to someone, and then come back to it with fresh eyes. I assure you that once you learn the programming concepts in the article you will look back and see that it was all really easy and elegant and it simply took you a bit of time to absorb it. You may still feel like you’re missing some vital information. And you are. But you’ll never learn it all, and this is a good start.

Thanks to you great developer, I appreciate your time. Please highlights words that need more explanations, use the comment box below to ask for your questions or forward any message concerning any topics that you want me to write on.

Action Steps

Ø Prepare to have a mentor tell him/her about your plan

Ø Choose your programming language

Ø Create that application on your mind.

Ø Make research and ask your mentor, start making progress

Code! Code!! Code!!! Cheers…

Written and compiled by Olacode!

Cheers!!!!!!

Email:teetoheeb@gmail.com

Twitter: olacode01