[LowellFeierabend]

Hey everyone. To start off, I’m not a fan of math. I’m currently in pre-calculus (level prior to the AP Calculus classes) and I’m getting a B in the class. However, I love computers with a passion that’s indescribable to me.

My dream is to become a programmer, but I’m unaware of what the challenges regarding math will be. I plan on taking AP Computer Science next year, which mainly focuses on Java. The summer homework for that class is asking questions such as what is the relation of software with hardware, or list and describe the necessary components for a working computer.

For those experienced/starting off, should I continue down this path for a possible future career? Should I begin to learn now?(if so, where should I begin?)

[Amit]

I’m not a fan of math. I’m currently in pre-calculus (level prior to the AP Calculus classes) and I’m getting a B in the class. However, I love computers with a passion that’s indescribable to me.

My dream is to become a programmer, but I’m unaware of what the challenges regarding math will be. I plan on taking AP Computer Science next year, which mainly focuses on Java. The summer homework for that class is asking questions such as what is the relation of software with hardware, or list and describe the necessary components for a working computer.

For those experienced/starting off, should I continue down this path for a possible future career? Should I begin to learn now?(if so, where should I begin?)

[ShikhaTan]

Just pick a language, know what you want to learn from the language and get at it. If you continue to procrastinate you’ll eventually get nowhere trying to make up your mind here and there.

Dozens to choose from: Python, Ruby, C, C#, C++, Java, Perl, PHP etc…the list goes on.

[Zaragoza]

Try to have a destination is mind with your programming.. I mean have something you want to achieve, something useful and work towards that. A tool for sprite packing, a game of pong, a tool for traffic light management, anything to give you context to the code.

[SapnaVishwas]

Actually, this can be counter-effective. If you think of some specific project, it often tends to be a lot more complex than you anticipate at first. This means that you won’t be able to achieve your goal in the first few months, maybe not even in a year. Or maybe you finish something but it doesn’t turn out so well since you didn’t have much experience. That usually makes people give up. For me the effective method of learning has always been: “That language/SDK/approach/subject is cool/fun! I’ll try messing with that a bit.”. This causes you to feel more like you moved forward, rather than the distance to your goal reduced from 10^10 to (10^10)-1.

Unless your initials goal are small. That’ll work. But people who think like “I want to make a new GTA!” usually burn out in a few days.

[Ganesh]

You may want to have a look at

http://projecteuler.net/

Project Euler presents a variety of math and computer science problems that you can solve in order to learn programming languages. The problems are small enough that you shouldn’t get overwhelmed but complex enough to push you to learn the basics of a language. I did a pile of the problems a few years back to teach myself Ruby. You should find the first fifty or so problems pretty manageable.

The problems will also reinforce the difference between programming and computer science. Brute force solutions to many of the Euler problems are trivially easy to implement but you’ll quickly find that they take far too long to run. The techniques you’ll learn in CS will reduce the time or space requirements of the solutions to much more reasonable levels.

Another thing I’ve done to apply a new programming language is to build a simplified version of a popular website. I did Twitter to learn how to use Ruby in a web environment. Such an exercise will give you a decent sense of what a programming job is like, without all of the annoying baggage that comes with a corporate environment.

[ShikhaTan]

Learn java, Oracle Sql, C++, Python and PHP.

You have a lot of pdf books around the net.

Take into account any language you learn, will require a lot of your time and patience.