Is programming difficult?  Is it difficult to learn how to program?

In this article we will cover the points on how to learn programming in the best way and answer if it is difficult to learn how to program

Hey you programmer, all right? Let’s talk more about learning in programming and demystify this difficulty that is imposed in this area by some people

Answering beforehand: programming is not difficult, learning how to program is not difficult either.

So why do people say that learning how to program is difficult?

There is a habit that some people have of saying that everything is difficult, but what happens is that there has not been enough practice.

So everything that we don’t have a certain experience is, in some way, difficult

Did you learn to drive the first time you got into a car? Have you ever felt comfortable driving on a highway?

If you don’t drive: have you already learned something, to the point of being satisfied with your knowledge, the first time you had contact with?

Of course not!

Programming, like all things we don’t know, also starts from this principle

You literally need to get your hands dirty and persist in order to become natural and then not be more difficult.

Many give up at the beginning, without giving the number of chances that this knowledge requires.

Of course, it’s not the simplest, as there are many correlated subjects that are also necessary for you to say that you know how to program well.

It can scare you at first and create this aversion, but if you take a moment out of your day to learn to program, you will soon be getting comfortable with new technologies and new programming concepts.

You need to exercise the programming muscle so that it gives you more strength and responds better the next time you use it.

How to learn programming?

If you’ve already convinced yourself that programming is not that difficult, let’s now see how you can learn to program effectively.

First you must choose a language that you want to be good at.

It’s no use starting with a framework or library, examples: Laraval or React

If you don’t know yet PHP and JavaScript respectively

After the chosen language, spend time learning its basic concepts, with tutorials and also in the documentation itself

Learn how to use documentation to your advantage

Also, always apply all the knowledge learned

If you learned how to create an if, perform examples with other situations from what you learned

Only then will you be able to fill in the gaps you created by learning the way the instructor taught

It probably won’t cover all cases, and this is on purpose, as it would be very redundant and the interest in learning is exclusively yours.

Apart from that the students are at different levels, so for the sake of didactics it is necessary to pass the information in concise ways, with examples and without much repetition

In addition to your practices, you can search for programming exercises, they exist at the most varied levels

I recommend the HackerRank site, there you will have numerous programming problems to solve

When you already know the basic concepts it’s time to evolve, so let’s see how to do that in the next topics

The Framework Problem

First it is important that you understand how frameworks can harm you

For those who don’t know: they are rapid development tools, which follow standards and technically you do more with less code, Laravel is a PHP framework

How wonderful, I’ll do less code! So why is it a bad option to learn to program?

Precisely by abstracting so many basic concepts, you become a slave to the tool

And not everything will be solved with it, and not all companies use it

Today could be Laravel and tomorrow could be Symfony

So what to do?

You need to learn the basics of the language, only then will you be able to adapt to a new tool faster

Because new IT learning is constantly requested, there is no comfort zone

It even exists, but it’s for the mediocre

If you want to be above average, learn the basics in a solid way and then learn a framework.

Why is documentation so important?

Generally, those new to programming do not usually use documentation, as they find the solution in good and bad places.

The good ones would be reliable sites like StackOverFlow, but even so, we have to be aware of the answers, they are not always the best alternatives

And the bad ones would be random blogs on the internet, with the only intention of capturing views to render in AdSense

So how to get rid of it and solve my problem  correctly?

In the documentation!

It is always made by the developers of the tool, be it a language or framework

Then, it is the most reliable source of information

Of course, like any other manual, there may be a lack of some concept or another, and that’s where we solve it externally.

However, as time passes, better documentation emerges, with examples of applied codes.

Making our life much easier, because in addition to explaining what such instruction does, it is also applied to a real situation.

So I repeat: get used to looking at the documentation!

How to continually improve in programming?

To close with a flourish, let’s go to the answer on how to always improve

And it’s actually quite simple, the first way is to create real projects or replicate existing ones.

So you can apply all your learned theory to real-world business rules

So you go from a testing stage to life, creating software that can give you problems and you need to adjust.

So that all pages and database transactions work in perfect harmony

It is common to make an update and break another part of our application

Therefore, this is what we must also experience in our studies, in order to be able to resolve more promptly when this happens in our work.

Another way to improve is by learning more complex tools like frameworks and libs

Now that you understand the fundamental concepts, it is important to always seek evolution

Don’t stay stagnant and try what they are launching in the market and what is also already consolidated

It will be a great experience and will expand your horizons

In addition, the code of these frameworks is usually open, and you can read them to improve your way of programming even more.

Reading code is another important way to learn to program!