What is a good way to learn more about Computer Programming while still in high school?

Hello Bianca,

Great question! I have had success by signing up for Coursera Online Courses. There are many to choose from and most are free. I focused on Python and there's a good argument for beginning there as Python is a non-declarative programming languages which allows you to attempt projects and see success quickly. There are also hundreds of modules written to help you accomplish tasks in a variety of settings. For example, the language of corporate is still largely spreadsheets and there are modules that allow you to read, write and create spreadsheets programmatically.

One important piece of advice. It helps a lot to have a problem to solve - something you care about. That can be as simple as creating your own website or creating one for someone else. But it's hard to get started without a reason to code.

Looking at the big picture, most professional programmers write in a declarative language such as Java. If you see yourself becoming a programmer it would probably make sense to enroll in a college course which teaches Java or C or the like.

There are also community groups such as Girls that Code and like which are in place to support women in technology - I went to a Py-Data conference on the Facebook campus which had a track especially for high school girls. I know people at Facebook and Pivotal Labs if you wanted to talk to those kind of folks just to get their perspective on a career in programming.

Best,

Hagen

Hi Bianca,
A good book on Python would be a great first step. My experience is that if you actually 'type' in your programs (rather than copying it from a cd or website), it gives you more confidence. This is a time to build up your logic. The exercises in books would help you with that. Once you build up a solid logic, learning new languages would be very easy. Best of luck.

Become an expert in a programming language. Python 3 is a good one. Write your own programs. Almost everything you need for your programs is free.

When coding, if you copy and paste code from a website, be sure that you understand everything about it. Otherwise, you won’t know how to debug the code if something doesn’t work.

Teach yourself how to write unit tests for your programs. Unit testing ensures that your programs do what they are supposed to do.

Be sure and read the documentation of the language’s syntax. For Python 3, that would be The Python Language Reference.

Teach yourself how to do everything from the command line. When the IDE screws something up, you’ll be able to fix it.

If you’re running Windows, learn UNIX. When you get a job programming you’re going to use both. So you might as well get a head start. FreeBSD and Linux are good ones. You can install them in a VirtualBox.

Don’t give up. Follow your dreams. You’ll love going to work because you’ll be doing what you love.

Hi Bianca,

I am glad to know that you enjoy coding :). The previous replies have very good inputs for you. I'll just add , there are lot of sites which have good online courses, you can browse through them. If you already have decided on the programing language you would like to learn you can google out for basics and tutorials, if not then following links might be helpful.Key thing, having understanding of data structures and basic concepts is important with any programming language.

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/computer_programming/index.htm
https://code.org/
https://www.codecademy.com/
http://www.coursera.org/

All the best and happy coding !