Well, I suppose I'll crawl out of the woodwork and say a few things.
First, I'm not one to be a good example or a good source of good 'how to program' books. Partially because, let's be honest, writing software is an exercise in 'general problem solving', and nobody knows how to do that, in general (if they did, the program to solve all the problems would already written and running, solving all the world's problems - or at least writing programs in response to problem statements, and all the programmers (or software developers, or whatever they are these days) would be out of work).
Second, I'm not a good source of such because I'm almost entirely self-taught. Even the languages which I learned by reading books - the books are too old to be useful (FORTRAN programming??? Yeah, really useful in the general marketplace today!).
IMHO, the MOST important thing to be a good programmer (yeah, you didn't ask that question, very good for you, sorry I stepped right in to it ;-)...
So, IMHO two of the most important things are to understand how to solve problems, and be able to keep the big picture in your head WHILE mired down in the nitty details of the solution.
And I have no idea, really, how to teach either of those.
And I'll say something that could ignite a flame war, but hey, I've stepped this deeply in to it might as well dive in head first!
IMHO, at one level hardware design and software design are the same thing. You are sticking together 'things' to solve a problem. In software, the 'things' tend to be blocks of code or such like, and in hardware design (at least, digital), your things are physical devices (gates, CPUs, etc).
Now, on to something that MIGHT be helpful, as all that blather above certainly won't help you or anyone else...
First, do you enjoy solving problems?
As others have hinted at or said: "What kind of problems do you like to solve?".
You've said you want to help with accessibility. I applaud you!!!! We need more of that kind of effort!
I wrote some stuff, and realized that the BEST thing to start with is the thing that motivates you the most. Is it not being able to 'hear' videos? Is it not having a good screen reader? Being motivated about something often will help you stick it out when things get tough (see footnote below). You might not be able to do the whole thing, but after researching the current state of things (and what languages are involved in the current solutions, or at least the current 'things' that you'll need to modify or at least 'hook in to' in order to add the accessibility feature), what other tools/apps are out there that almost do the job, is there another application or something that can be used to help fill in the gap, and so forth. After all of that, if you don’t feel like attacking the whole thing, you might see a part that you feel like attacking.
(This thing that motivates you might be the biggest gaping hole (missing piece), or the thing you think would be the easiest to start hacking on).
I probably had more, but I've suddenly run out of steam. Sorry!
Here's that footnote:
Footnote - I've come to believe that, unless you are ABSOLUTELY and IMPOSSIBLY an extreme optimist you can never survive as a software developer. If for no other reason that you'll spend many years underestimating how long something will take (partially because of optimism), and you'll always be optimistic that you can do the next one faster... You have to be an optimist or you'll get tired of banging your head against the wall all the time, and quit.
Rusty
-----Original Message-----
From: PLUG-discuss [
mailto:plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Harold Hartley
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2019 6:31 PM
To:
plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
Subject: Re: learning to write code
The last time I did programming was in the 1980's when I did dos basic. Dos basic doesn't even compare with the programming languages of today.
On Fri, Feb 8, 2019, at 18:24, der.hans wrote:
> Am 08. Feb, 2019 schwätzte Harold Hartley so:
>
> moin moin Harold,
>
> Helping with accessability is awesome!
>
> If you're not already familiar with programming I suggest a book that uses
> a language to teach programming concepts and branch out from there.
>
> I've been reading Practical Programming to re-familiarize myself with
> Python. It seems to be a decent book for learning to program. While I
> haven't done much development in years, I used to do a lot. As such, I'm
> not a beginning programmer, so my evaluation might be biased.
>
> https://pragprog.com/book/gwpy2/practical-programming
>
> The e-book is DRM free.
>
> Lots of software is written in Python, so there are many opportunities
> with it.
>
> A complaint that has come up on this list is KDE's lack of an
> accessability API. I know KDE wants to have one, but it hasn't yet
> happened.
>
> KDE work would likely be in C++, so you could target that language instead
> if you want to work on KDE.
>
> ciao,
>
> der.hans
>
> > I’m interested in open source projects. I would like to help those with disabilities to use a computer for anything. But the software isn’t out there to help those with disabilities. I know because I’m disabled and deaf.
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 8, 2019, at 11:57, techlists@phpcoderusa.com wrote:
> >> Hi Harold,
> >>
> >> Start with the end in mind. What is your goal? Web? Working on Open
> >> source projects?
> >>
> >> Knowing that will help us give you feedback.
> >>
> >> Keith
> >>
> >>
> >> On 2019-02-08 10:33, Harold Hartley wrote:
> >>> I am interested in learning to write code and not sure where to start.
> >>> I'm looking for anyone that can steer me in the right direction for
> >>> books or web site that can help me get started.
> >>>
> >>> I currently run Fedora 29, with 1 TB drive, i3-7100 processor and
> >>> currently 4 GB ram but will be upgrading to 16 GB ram and with dual
> >>> monitors.
> >>>
> >>> So hopefully someone can point me in the right direction for info.
> >>> --
> >>> Harold Hartley
> >>> 17632 N. 5th place
> >>> Phoenix, AZ 85022
> >>> wheelie207@ownmail.net
> >>> ---------------------------------------------------
> >>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
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> >>> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
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> >
> > --
> > Harold Hartley
> > 17632 N. 5th place
> > Phoenix, AZ 85022
> > wheelie207@ownmail.net
> >
> >
>
> --
> # https://www.LuftHans.com https://www.PhxLinux.org
> # "The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own
> # reason for existing." -- Albert Einstein
>
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--
Harold Hartley
17632 N. 5th place
Phoenix, AZ 85022
wheelie207@ownmail.net
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