Am Aspiring to Be Programmer But with inadequate resource as listed below

*No Personal PC but i have one to manage

*Power Problem but can still use up to 4hrs power supply

*etc

Pls what can you recommend, although i have started somewhere and i have basic knowledge of
C++ ,PHP/Mysql, a little about Java in all i did not exceed Loop/Structures but i do try a little bit in Functions

How can i cope i have try to read as much as i can

Hello, Aspiring programmer.
Programming is challenging and rewarding. if you really want to be a good programmer, you have got to shun all excuses and find means to achieve your goal by all means. most programmers are self made, even those who have every bit of opportunity, so bad power supply is not enough excuse. concerning the fact that you don't own a system. I started programming with a business center system, by making friend with the girls working there, later using a friend system before buying my own system a Pentium one desktop system for that matter. so get started and do good for your self all you need are commitment, passion, and focus. you can pick up small project in all this e book by attempting the exercise at the end of each chapter, who ever said its easy dey tell you big lie, because nothing great ever come easy, I wish you luck in this journey of programming.
SANJUMA

You can get a capable netbook for 60k. The Lenovo Ideapad S12.
You should not focus on programming languages alone.
Study databases and web frameworks too.
It helps to have recommended books.

What's your goal really, though? Want a career as a software developer or a business?

Concerning power, I also made friends with the headmaster of a primary school close to my home. Luckily for me, it was a private school and they ran their generator throughout school hours. I also typed their exam questions at the end of the session and made some money from through that.
I know it might be quite tough, but if you look hard enough, and are ready to sacrifice, you should find a solution.

Also, like Seun said, what area do you wish to delve into?

The following post should may also help you decide. Best of luck
NB: You must be ready to read. Read codes, read books and have enough time to practice, learn new ways,



[b]culled from http://norvig.com/21-days.html

Here's my recipe for programming success:

Get interested in programming, and do some because it is fun. Make sure that it keeps being enough fun so that you will be willing to put in ten years.
Talk to other programmers; read other programs. This is more important than any book or training course.
Program. The best kind of learning is learning by doing. To put it more technically, "the maximal level of performance for individuals in a given domain is not attained automatically as a function of extended experience, but the level of performance can be increased even by highly experienced individuals as a result of deliberate efforts to improve." (p. 366) and "the most effective learning requires a well-defined task with an appropriate difficulty level for the particular individual, informative feedback, and opportunities for repetition and corrections of errors." (p. 20-21) The book Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life is an interesting reference for this viewpoint.
If you want, put in four years at a college (or more at a graduate school). This will give you access to some jobs that require credentials, and it will give you a deeper understanding of the field, but if you don't enjoy school, you can (with some dedication) get similar experience on the job. In any case, book learning alone won't be enough. "Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter" says Eric Raymond, author of The New Hacker's Dictionary. One of the best programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree; he's produced a lot of great software, has his own news group, and made enough in stock options to buy his own nightclub.
Work on projects with other programmers. Be the best programmer on some projects; be the worst on some others. When you're the best, you get to test your abilities to lead a project, and to inspire others with your vision. When you're the worst, you learn what the masters do, and you learn what they don't like to do (because they make you do it for them).
Work on projects after other programmers. Be involved in understanding a program written by someone else. See what it takes to understand and fix it when the original programmers are not around. Think about how to design your programs to make it easier for those who will maintain it after you.
Learn at least a half dozen programming languages. Include one language that supports class abstractions (like Java or C++), one that supports functional abstraction (like Lisp or ML), one that supports syntactic abstraction (like Lisp), one that supports declarative specifications (like Prolog or C++ templates), one that supports coroutines (like Icon or Scheme), and one that supports parallelism (like Sisal).
Remember that there is a "computer" in "computer science". Know how long it takes your computer to execute an instruction, fetch a word from memory (with and without a cache miss), read consecutive words from disk, and seek to a new location on disk. (Answers here.)
Get involved in a language standardization effort. It could be the ANSI C++ committee, or it could be deciding if your local coding style will have 2 or 4 space indentation levels. Either way, you learn about what other people like in a language, how deeply they feel so, and perhaps even a little about why they feel so.
Have the good sense to get off the language standardization effort as quickly as possible.
With all that in mind, its questionable how far you can get just by book learning. Before my first child was born, I read all the How To books, and still felt like a clueless novice. 30 Months later, when my second child was due, did I go back to the books for a refresher? No. Instead, I relied on my personal experience, which turned out to be far more useful and reassuring to me than the thousands of pages written by experts.
Fred Brooks, in his essay No Silver Bullet identified a three-part plan for finding great software designers:

Systematically identify top designers as early as possible.
Assign a career mentor to be responsible for the development of the prospect and carefully keep a career file.
Provide opportunities for growing designers to interact and stimulate each other.
This assumes that some people already have the qualities necessary for being a great designer; the job is to properly coax them along. Alan Perlis put it more succinctly: "Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught how not to. So it is with the great programmers".
So go ahead and buy that Java book; you'll probably get some use out of it. But you won't change your life, or your real overall expertise as a programmer in 24 hours, days, or even months.[/b]

This Nigeria is not a Country

USA1234567:

This Nigeria is not a Country

Then what is it? An Island,

which language will you recommend for a beginner?currently learning C#.

C# is super.

I can see you currently have less funds to acquire the tools needed to really pursue software development properly.

I will recommend you focus first of web and mobile apps because they are quicker to monetise. The Nigeria software industry is still very unproductive for the software developer.

I am speaking from experience, I did Sun Java like 5years ago in NIIT, I couldn't really get a proper job or even use the acquired knowledge to startup my own business. I decided to take some courses in Web development, I did some .NET, and also php MySQL, Ajax and JQuery. Within 3months, I was developing web projects for companies and also building some for my personal use and I was able to save money to buy a laptop, get an office for my business etc.

I'm a fan of scripting languages. I'd suggest learning Python, if you are going to try to learn programming from scratch.

Master that language, then it'll be easy to learn new ones later.

so pls ekt_bear can u recommend any books for python?

beebee2000:

so pls ekt_bear can u recommend any books for python?

Hehe, I actually chose to learn a different scripting language (Ruby). I'm only talking in hindsight. . . for a variety of reasons, I wish I'd put my time into Python instead.

Anyway, rather than buying a book, for now I'd suggest going to their website (http://www.python.org/) and taking a look at the documentation (http://www.python.org/doc/). This beginner's guide for example (http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide) looks very useful. You can download python, write some scripts yourself on your computer.

Then once you've worked through some online tutorials to get a sense of the language, you can then buy (or if cheap like me and not too concerned about violating copyright, bittorrent) a book to get deeper into the language.

Many Thanks to all of you and for you encouraging post I am really grateful I am also an aspiring programmer but i took off with c++ to and tough it is not very easy but I am coping but am i

actually taken the right step please advice me many Thanks,

I use this site called cprogramming.com it is very good for starters tutorials are there, Others too may go and try,

You  have to focus  on a  particular  language first, advisably C, then  learning  a  second  language  will be a  matter of  a  couple  of  weeks. Try  and  go  through  this  interesting read  about  choosing  a  career  in  programming
http://digitsdotbooks..com/2011/04/choosing-your-it-career-path.html

Seun has shown all of us that programming worts all the stress. I am not a techy guy but I feel robbed whenever I hear how much my bank spends on indians in the name of maintaining various applications.I learnt some of these indian folks did not even attend university. Can't we have our own silicon valley? My own perception of our Computer Village is that the place is all about selling of PCs,laptops,software and accessories, does not seem to be a technological incubation center to me.

MANY tHANKS @ BODOSKY

Please if I may ask what language do you program in and how long have you been programming.

Thanks a lot

@ Jimmy Boy we all have to start from some where we need to be like them but that will mean a long time and we can start now, There will be a way out by his Grace,

Just like Seun said, don't focus only on programming languages. Tho you would have to focus n something someime soon bet the best way to start is to be broad. Learn as much as you can. Databases, web development, about 3-4 programming languages and then you can chose what you want to be a SPECIALIST in. The reason is because a programming language is a programming language irrespective of the name its called. Same with scripting and functional languages. They are all the same. Now if you say you are a c++ and Java programer programmer. My question would be "SO?". You are just a programmer that can write desktop apps and some other few things. You would be limited in terms of skills.

The bad part of a limited programmer is that he/she can take only one job. You are a very wonderful Java programmer but when the Job of a web developer comes, you sit there looking at it and using the common slang "Had i known". To prevent this you should try and be as vast as you can and probably after 10 years I would be reading an article about you on wikki.


Just an advice on what to start with.

Programming languages.
Java
Scripting
PHP (server side)
Javascript and Ajax(client side)
Web design
XHTML
HTML5
CSS3


Now when you start all these you get to a stage where you know you are really confident. Say for instance Java, when you get to Networks/Sockets or any of those advanced topics. You know that YES I have made it.
Then you take a new language like C++. NOw If it takes you 5 yrs(can be any number yr) to master Java, It is going to take you 2yrs to master C++. This is because they are both programming languages. Now every languages have differences like syntax and methods. Well, this won't pose a problem for someone who knows how to program.

Same applies for others. When you are confident with PHP, take something like perl/ruby.

With regards to having a computer, you can start reading books that would aid your analytical thinking as this is essential. Problem solving, you need to be fast when it comes to analyzing and implementing a solution to a problem. You can be doing this pending te time you get one. Solve mathematics(not sin and cosine), am talking bout challenges. Word problems, simple brain teasers and puzzles. Play chess and sudoku. You would be surprised how they would help you when you start off.

I wish you the best of luck.

If at all you need any books, just email me on what language you want to study and you home address. I don't mind sending you something that can help aslong as you are devoted. Have done it on this forum before so am not blabbing. Also, if you want an e-book(which is faster) I have a lot and can email you aswel. My email is fayimora@hotmail.co.uk



On a final note, you need to keep this in mind.
There is a DIFFERENCE between a programmer and someone that knows how to write codes. Writing code is nothing. Solving the problem is important but developing a superb solution is even much more important.

@Fayimora, well said, btw,r u d guy i knw 4rm megas, ?

I aint in megas but used to be

I think you should start with web development technologies because its easy to start making money with it 'cos it takes some time for you to become good enough to start making money as a programmer using full blown programming languages like c, c++, java or c#. start with say joomla its easy enough to learn and then you can start developing websites for people and make some money then you can move to scripting language like php,javascript,xhtml etc and then to java  etc.All the best

Man I dunno if C or even C++ is a good first language to first learn to program with.

You spend too much time focusing on low-level bookkeeping.

I really think the best way to start is to start with a high-level programming language. You can always master more low-level languages later.

A person that wants a career as a programmer should be ready to learn software architecture in addition to coding. In programming a programmer is an architect and a builder at the same time. Here are some useful links below relating to software architecture:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRXe1omEGWQ

http://www.agiledata.org/essays/objectOrientation101.html

This is a nice thread. i have being trying to learn programming but dont know where to start from. can you advice web development or which one will be good for a total novice. thanks in advance. Will it be better to learn by one self or a school. Thanks in advance.

As a computer science student, I'd always wanted to be a versatile programmer but the only languages we were only taught were VB (100l), Cobol, fortran(200l), C++ and Assembly language (300l). Out of them all, I knew only VB and C++ and thats because there was someone taking us tuorials so all we did was know it- pass- and forget it. The lecturers were something else.
Now I need to code my final year project in C# and sql and I bet you I don't know how to go about it    .
School is LASU AT FESTAC

pheesayor:

As a computer science student, I'd always wanted to be a versatile programmer but the only languages we were only taught were VB (100l), Cobol, fortran(200l), C++ and Assembly language (300l). Out of them all, I knew only VB and C++ and thats because there was someone taking us tuorials so all we did was know it- pass- and forget it. The lecturers were something else.
Now I need to code my final year project in C# and sql and I bet you I don't know how to go about it    .
School is LASU AT FESTAC

lol

nairaland=nigerian google;anything you want.u get

@talk2hbl has said it all. My story is not much different. I started with business center where i typed my project. Once you are passionate about it, you will actually be one.

i recommend programming in C++. Programming is all about thinking and Logic, its very easy, key is you gotta enjoy it. Once you have mastered C++, then you can dabble into things like Operating systems programming, Network programming etc. These are just applications of your programming skills. Goodluck, i find programming boring because i have done a lot of it! . You can download C++ primers online for free and if you get a computer, install unix or linux, they come with a g++ compiler, so you can write your simple programs and compile them to begin with. I know in Nigeria, a computer science graduate can graduate without ever writing a single compilable code, at least i am sure of this 5 years back, not sure if things have changed now.

Let me add one more thing! Key to programming is LOGICAL thinking! for example, i am not trying to boast, but for one of my graduate class projects, i was supposed to code a Yagi Uda array antenna in matlab. Prior to that, i never knew matlab, but since i understood the problem and how i wanted to solve it, it was just a matter of semantics, so basically if you know what you are trying to accomplish, then just look it up online or use the help/man pages for that particular language. You dig??

when writing a code, DIVIDE and CONQUER is the key! No other way. Break your problem into little parts, then u have milestones that you can test. A good code is one with a lot of functions. Once you master divide and conquer, then you can start doing things like optimizing your code etc. Gosh, u got me started, coding is sweet when it works, better than sex!

Gee, I don't know how anyone can become a programmer without proper tools. PC with relivant software, books and an internet connection are NOT negotiable. It cost money to make money.