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Ask HN: Programming books for teaching beginners
I will be teaching some programming to an absolute beginner and am wondering what HN thinks is a good book for absolute beginners. So please share your thoughts.
I'm considering starting with 'Learn Pyhton the Hard Way'.
Some background:
She has some experience maintaining and setting up WordPress websites but I would say it is fairly limited.
I'm looking to teach fundamentals more than making her ready for a job although that would be welcome in the long run. So, gaining some understanding or being able to pivot to PHP and/or JavaScript is never a bad thing in this job market (Amsterdam).
- Cozumel 9y agoMaybe teach her how to make a Wordpress plugin? It'd slot in with what she already knows and she'd see immediate benefit as well as a real life application of her code. Learn Python the hard way is a great idea too though, I got my friend started with the Ruby one and she really took to it. Another good one for Python is http://automatetheboringstuff.com/ http://automatetheboringstuff.com/ Something to watch out for though is a lot of books are hopelessly out of date, code moves so fast that all the code examples in a book even just a couple of months old will be broken. Trivial for experienced people to workaround but typically if you're reading the book to learn you won't be able to figure it out.
- PaulHoule 9y agoHow old? What sort of things does this person want to program?
- Bootvis 9y ago29 years old. We don’t have a goal yet so I’m sticking to fundamentals. She has a degree in Communications so something web-related might be interesting.