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Business Analyst by profession and a Management Graduate. Knowing nothing about coding, I got hooked and fascinated with the things we can make if we are able

• nstart 12y ago
  Here's a story of pragmatism I grew up in a family which was into IT. My father owns an Enterprise IT company. My brother was learning programming by himself. They both thought it would be a great idea to teach me how to program too. I. Hated. It. (pun intended). All those if else conditions and bla bla bla for loops were booooring. Suffice to say, I never touched programming till much later. This was when I was around 10-12 years old. Fast forward to the point at which I was supposed to pick a degree to do. One thing led to another and through the most random thought process ever, I picked a degree in applied IT. That's where you learn how to analyse a business and design the system spec and suggest re-engineering of processes for an IT solution to be brought in (and a lot of really great stuff that's essential to form a great backbone/foundation to any IT project). For the first year, students from software engineering and applied IT all take the same modules. One of those modules, was introduction to programming via C (Applied IT students need this since their final year will see them partially/fully implementing solutions that they come up with for real world problems). The first lecture, the lecturer walks up, ties his hair back, and tells us to forget about the language C before we start. "Huh? But we are going to learn C right?". But no. He continues. "Programming ISN'T about the language. It's about solving problems. If you can solve problems and if you can write down the solution to the problems in a step by step way, then you can program. Everything else is just syntax" That lit a light bulb in my head. Suddenly programming wasn't about memorising how to use an if condition. It was about just googling what the language uses for conditions. It wasn't about memorising 'array()'. It was about finding out what the language uses to store a set of elements in a grouped or ordered way. It wasn't about the language. It was about first figuring out what steps I need to take to solve the problem before going back to the language to find out how their syntax supported my solution. I started programming then. I switched streams to Software Engineering. And now I look forward to programming every single day. That, is my suggestion. Don't take the path of simply learning the language. Approach everything from the path of how to solve a problem. 'When building you can use a nail or a screw. Learning how to move your hand to hit the nail when using a hammer, or learning how to twist a screw driver won't teach you how to choose between the nail or screw.' Cheers. Let me know if you need any specific help when learning though. Will be glad to help.
  • enigami 12y ago
    Thanks, that was really helpful and gives me a sense of direction to choose my learning path. Could you please help me with your contact, I can use some of your insights in the future as well
    • nstart 12y ago
      Hi. Mail is in my profile