7 Easy and Effective Tips for Learning a New Programming Language

One of the important skills that can boost your career is —  coding. 

Whether you are looking forward to getting a good position in the tech space or just want to create an app for fun, becoming a pro in coding will be the greatest asset to your professional and personal development. 

As a beginner, if you want to learn something more about coding and how you can get a grip on any programming language, then you’re at the right place. 

This article has seven easy tips to help you quickly learn to code. Let’s get started. 

7 Easy and Effective Tips for Learning a New Programming Language

1. Figure Out What You Want to Learn

When you start any programming language, you are excited at first. However, if you do not have an objective, then you may become frustrated. In the end, you will stop learning. 

Before embarking on the journey to learn a new programming language, you should consider what you want to know about coding. Once you have decided on the kind of project that you want to complete, then you must have appropriate resources available for the same. Following are some sets of questions that you need to answer:

• What is the right programming language to learn?
• What kind of job are you looking for? 
• If you want to earn more, then what skills should you have? 

Broad and vague goals can also affect your learning curve. It is suggested to start with small and more specific goals. For example, if you want to be a part of a software development team that excels in building world-class solutions, then you need to:

• Choose the programming language carefully. Pick only the one which you think can be easy to learn and would be useful for projects you look forward to working on.
• You need to set a deadline so that you can manage your time while learning it.

2. Start With the Basics

One of the common mistakes that every beginner makes while learning a programming language is skipping the fundamentals. Once you have chosen the language, you should start from the beginning. Do not jump to the advanced levels or following chapters since you have to be clear about the fundamentals of the language to end up with many challenges and barriers you may face. 

Also, it is suggested not to try to take on multiple classes at once. You’ll face more challenges if you progress with the more advanced materials without learning the basics. So, data structure, variables, syntax, and tools are the main fundamentals you need to be a pro at. 

Bottom line: As a beginner, if you will not be confident in one language, do not go to the next level. Instead, try to stick with it and get clear on all the basics.

3. Take Online Courses

If you still have doubts about the offline courses, you can also start with online courses. Such courses make it easier for everyone to learn to code, regardless of location and time zones. You can know the same content and clear your doubts by subscribing to online courses. If one source does not make sense, then do not lose confidence. There are plenty of online resources where you can learn coding. 

However, you can start directly with the available online courses. This is because these courses are well-organized and keep everything digestible. It also ensures that you will be learning things at the right pace. Below is a list of popular online platforms if you are ready to invest your time in learning a particular language: 

• BitDegree
• Coursera
• Udemy
• Sololearn
• Khan Academy
• edX
• GeeksforGeeks

4. Hands-On Debugging Tools 

It’s impossible to achieve error-free coding. Therefore, as a learner, you should learn debugging to minimize the occurrence of defects. 

You might be aware of the fact that one of the most effective methods of finding bugs in your code is tools for debugging, which are built into the IDEs, i.e., Integrated Development Environment. Coders generally use it to write the code. Debuggers also come with web browsers (Chrome developer tools and Firefox Developer tools) for debugging web apps. 

These tools can help you to create breakpoints in the code. Some tools let you know when the code has some breakpoint, because of which the code doesn’t run properly. This way, you will get a clear picture of what’s going wrong in the code.

The bottom line is that debugger tools can help you to find out the most non-obvious bugs in the code. Therefore, it is a best practice to keep your hands on such tools.

5. Practice the Code

Merely reading the code can’t help you to master it. Reading the study material can help you to some extent, but coding and figuring out solutions on your own will make a huge difference. Get hands-on coding experience and keep practicing regularly. Although reading about loops and variables is a good practice, when you start programming, you can face a lot of problems. Therefore, implement the code practically and find out the solutions for a specific problem. 

Pro tip: Change and optimize your code while writing the program. This way, your logical thinking ability can be enhanced, and you will learn a lot of new things eventually. 

6. Check Out How Other Programmers Code

Going through someone else’s code is a great way to learn and add something new to your skill set. Checking out other developers’ programs can help you to enhance your coding skills further. This method can help you in many ways:

• First, you can understand new code faster.
• Secondly, you will better understand your code.
• Lastly, it will give you some outstanding benefits and examples of quality coding. 

Furthermore, GitHub and Searchcode are two main sources where you can start with a program or code. To know more about the ideas behind the code, you can read the documentation. 

7. Complete Projects

For beginners, there are several coding projects available to start with. Some of the projects include:

• Redesigning the existing website template.
• Building a multi-page responsive website
• Creating a simple application. For example, a calculator can be a good project to start with. 
• Web scraping using python.
• Contribute to an open-source project.

Furthermore, you can do a quick Google search for mini-challenges. Therefore, you will be able to develop skills for real-world apps. 

Final Thoughts

In this article, we went through some essential tips that can help you learn to code and create excellent software and applications. Also, you need to develop thinking skills, which can get you there. 

HTML, CSS, PHP, Ruby, Swift, Java, and many more programming languages are there to start with. On top of that, coding should be problem-solving, and this is what beginners should understand before starting. The problem-solving approach can help you to handle technical challenges. 

You can comment below if you want to share your knowledge with us. We’d like to hear from you!