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Hi Everyone - I work as the executive assistant to the Chief Information Officer at my company. I am so envious of my developer colleagues and would love to le

Hi Everyone - I work as the executive assistant to the Chief Information Officer at my company. I am so envious of my developer colleagues and would love to learn how to code. Any suggestions on where I should start? My colleague recommended the W3Schools online. Any other suggestions you may have? Thanks soooo much!

blackflame7000 10y ago
I guess off topic discussions are allowed. I didn't know.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Some do, but either way that has no relevance to whether some working as an executive assistant to a CIO would have a reason to take up programming.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
yarou 10y ago
I gather you're interested in web development. The best advice I'd give is to pick up a good JS book and build several projects to get a feel for the language.
anthony_franco 10y ago
It would depend on your learning style. If you're a visual learner I'd get a $15 Udemy course during one of their sales. Looks at the example projects made, the reviews from the students. If any seem interesting then just dive right in.
julsonl 10y ago
I'd suggest finding a hands-on online course that gives you a tiny portfolio in the end. A lot of the fun with programming is seeing your work come alive and seeing all the projects you've completed. Assuming you haven't programmed before, I wouldn't go with buying a programming language-specific book to start since those can be pretty boring to go through. Books will start to be useful as you develop a lot more curiosity and want to fill in your knowledge gaps. My friend's learning from the ground-up and he's using Code Academy (https://www.codecademy.com https://www.codecademy.com). If you're a little more serious about this, you could also look into Udacity's Nanodegree program.
- katpas 10y ago
  I'd also recommend giving Code Academy a try in the first instance. It's free, there's no set up on your computer needed (it's all done through their website) and it guides you through. It's how I started learning when I was trying to do it around my job, I eventually left to work on learning to code full time.
Jtsummers 10y ago
Start scratching itches. There are a lot of tasks in that role that you repeat frequently. Maybe you have to generate reports or report summaries for the CIO from data you collect across the company. Maybe it doesn't come in in a standardized format. Play around with python and/or numpy for this (lots of tutorials online) for slurping data from a text file and processing it to generate those summaries. Start playing around with this to get the basics of the language, writing functions, conditional logic and loops. Hell, you could even play with programming macros in Excel (not my preference, but it is readily available in most offices, and, if like mine, you'll have lots of reports in Excel already). The point here is not to pick you favorite or final language, but to get some practice with manipulating data, consuming input, producing output, and using logic effectively.

blackflame7000 10y ago

I guess off topic discussions are allowed. I didn't know.

dragonwriter 10y ago
Some do, but either way that has no relevance to whether some working as an executive assistant to a CIO would have a reason to take up programming.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

yarou 10y ago

I gather you're interested in web development. The best advice I'd give is to pick up a good JS book and build several projects to get a feel for the language.

anthony_franco 10y ago

It would depend on your learning style. If you're a visual learner I'd get a $15 Udemy course during one of their sales. Looks at the example projects made, the reviews from the students. If any seem interesting then just dive right in.

julsonl 10y ago

I'd suggest finding a hands-on online course that gives you a tiny portfolio in the end. A lot of the fun with programming is seeing your work come alive and seeing all the projects you've completed. Assuming you haven't programmed before, I wouldn't go with buying a programming language-specific book to start since those can be pretty boring to go through. Books will start to be useful as you develop a lot more curiosity and want to fill in your knowledge gaps. My friend's learning from the ground-up and he's using Code Academy (https://www.codecademy.com https://www.codecademy.com). If you're a little more serious about this, you could also look into Udacity's Nanodegree program.

katpas 10y ago
I'd also recommend giving Code Academy a try in the first instance. It's free, there's no set up on your computer needed (it's all done through their website) and it guides you through. It's how I started learning when I was trying to do it around my job, I eventually left to work on learning to code full time.

Jtsummers 10y ago

Start scratching itches. There are a lot of tasks in that role that you repeat frequently. Maybe you have to generate reports or report summaries for the CIO from data you collect across the company. Maybe it doesn't come in in a standardized format. Play around with python and/or numpy for this (lots of tutorials online) for slurping data from a text file and processing it to generate those summaries. Start playing around with this to get the basics of the language, writing functions, conditional logic and loops. Hell, you could even play with programming macros in Excel (not my preference, but it is readily available in most offices, and, if like mine, you'll have lots of reports in Excel already). The point here is not to pick you favorite or final language, but to get some practice with manipulating data, consuming input, producing output, and using logic effectively.