4 replies to this topic

[Lingodawg]

Okey, just a quick overview of my life:

- I work in the finance field and have been doing a lot of Excel
- I also run a IT-support business on the side and been doing this successfully for over 2 years
- I have been doing html & css and installed/tweaked things like Joomla / Wordpress etc.
- I have never really done any "real programming"

So okey, where to start. I would like to learn programming, both I think it is good for my job as well as I think it is a good skill to learn. I would never want to work as a "code monkey" but would really want to know how to read code and get a bigger understanding of things. For example if I had a stable of programmers and a client asked "how much would this cost?" I would like to be able to understand how much programming would be needed and so on, I hope you guys understand what I am after. Please note that I am not meaning this in a degrading way, some people might like to code all day and some don't. Think of it the same as a person that might want to learn how accounting works in order to read corporate reports but doesn't want to be a "number cruncher", I am pretty much the same way with programming. Nothing against people who sit in front of their monitors day in and day-out reading code, I just know that it wouldn't fit me as I need more social interaction, meet different people etc.

Please note that I would really like to learn how to program even though I do not want to work full-time as a programmer but rather as a side-skill / business.

Okey so now you got a brief understanding of my goals, now to the problems. I am a rather impatient guy, I want results fast. Ive read on various sites that it takes like "10 years to learn programming", now this made me afraid. Hopefully that type of statement is for someone who never been sitting in front of a computer..

So my situation is that since Ive been doing a lot of it-support I have good understanding of things like hardware, users, file permissions, different fileformats etc, basically high "user-skill" rather then knowing all the things that happens behind the curtain. So my question is basically. If I have gotten stuck with a client problem that I did not know how to solved Ive usually used Google and improved my skills, so basically I would say that I am good at finding and extracting information. Now, I am not saying that I am smart but Ive finnished my masters degree (in finance) in half the time it usually takes, at least that proves that I am not "retarded".

A lot of bull****, so basically my question is the following:
- Do I have any advantages in learning programming considering my background? Would this "10 year to learn" be reduced a lot considering my experience or do I have to start from scratch?

Okey and if I should go with programming what should I learn of these:

1. Visual Basic (I am considering this since I work a lot in Excel and I noticed in my work that I am sometimes limited when building financial models due to me lacking proper programing skills)
2. Openedge (Would only learn this because a system we have at work is built no this)
3. Python (Everyone says this is the best to start with)

I understand this question sounds egoistic and it is but I really want to lear if I am "fit for learning programming" even though I dont want to spend a lot of time learning it to see that I will never be good at it / understand it. Have anyone of you come from a background similiar to mine and learned programming successfully?

[Revolt]

In my opinion your previous experience doesn't really matter that much when it comes to learning programming as long as you have sufficient dedication and will to work. That being said, you already seem to have one of the best qualities which is being able to research and gather data about your problems independently. I believe that is essential for a programmer. Furthermore, dealing with finance, I imagine you are able to quickly spot patterns and recognize relevant logical consequences which are skills that will certainly help when analysing code.

Regarding which language to choose, I would recommend you go for Visual Basic, atleast in the beginning. Python is an awesome language undoubtedly but you won't get visual results as fast as with VB.NET. A small GUI application in VB.NET can take as little as 30 minutes (obviously not a very complex one) whereas with Python first you'd have to choose which GUI toolkit to use (the one that ships with Python is rather bland), install it, learn how to create the various objects in it and code the design. There are some GUI designers that are able to generate Python code but I have yet to find a GUI designer as powerful as the one that ships with Visual Studio.

Once you have mastered VB.NET you could then take a look at C. This would help you read and understand a whole new universe of code using pointers, structures, explicit memory allocation and other things. However, I'm not sure if in your area of study and work C and similar languages are widely used. The thing is that save for syntactic differences codes in different languages, they are often surprisingly similar. You just have to be able to grasp the general workflow of execution to understand how the program works.

[WingedPanther]

Python and Perl are both good programming languages that can help you out a lot as a network administrator.

VB is also pretty easy to pick up, but be aware that it is different from VBA, which is the macro language of excel.

It doesn't take 10 years to learn how to program. You can be writing useful programs within a month or two. How long it will take to reach the skill level you desire will depend on your desired skill level, the language, how much time you spend on it, etc. Just as a frame of reference, I recently read a book called "Learn 7 Languages in 7 Weeks", where the idea is to get you up to speed on 7 different languages in 7 weeks. The idea is that you would be able to create useful programs in each language quickly, not be a master of any of them.

[Lingodawg]

Okey thank you for you responses! As with everything in life it should be "just do it" and I am going with that approach. Ive bought Learn Python The Hard Way | A Beginner Programming Book in Epub format and my plan is to finnish it within one month.

If anyone have any suggestions for VBA / VB beginner in Epub format please tell me!

Wingedpanther: What did you think about that 7 different languages book? Is it for novices or what's the audience?

[WingedPanther]

To be honest, it's meant for experienced programmers who already have the core programming concepts down, and just want to dive into some unusual languages. One thing I do with google searches is add "filetype:pdf" to the end of my searches.