When I started teaching myself how to program, I was quite overwhelmed. I've asked myself the question many times: Where do I start? Which sources are useful? And how do I become a good programmer?

I will try to answer all these questions in simple words.

What do programmers do?

My grandparents often ask me what I am doing. My answer is usually the same: I solve problems.

As a software developer I take a problem out of the world and try to solve it. Not every problem can be solved with software - it could prove difficult to satisfy world hunger with the help of zeros and ones. However, many problems with software can be solved. And I create this software.

Ok, I get it. But how is that help me? I still don't know where to start.

Understanding what a software developer does is relevant to understand where to start. Because before you learn any programming languages you should know:
Which problem do you want to solve?

Each programming language is designed for different problems and approaches. In the following I would like to give you a rough overview of some common programming languages I have often come into contact with.

PS: I know that some programming languages are scripting languages are and I know the difference :P. I just want to keep it relatively simple, so no confusion of terms.

Java

I started learning Java 4 months ago. It is an excellent programming language for everything. It runs on all common operating systems and can be used for large projects as well as small applications - and is very scalable. In addition, many statistics show: Java is the most popular programming language. Therefore you will find a lot of beginners tutorials and support in numerous forums. Java has become one of my favorite programming languages.

For programming in Java I use IntelliJ myself

Python

Python is a great programming language to start programming! It supports both object-oriented and functional programming and offers numerous additional libraries. Python can be used for web projects, client applications up to 3-dimensional applications such as video games. An important difference to other programming languages is the structure of the source code - the text you write to tell your computer what to do. While other programming languages structure them with symbols like curly braces, Python only does this by indenting the source code. This inevitably leads to a better readable code, which can also be used for other programming languages. Just like Java, Python is platform independent.

C#

C# is a personal love-hate relationship. I have spent 2 years with C#, and mine of me that I understood the most basic features also. However, during these 2 years it has done so many stupid things that make no sense. I have respect for all professional C# developers - but then I had to turn away from prinst: D C# (spoken c sharp) is a programming language developed by Microsoft which - who would have thought - is based on C and C++ among other things. The strength of C# lies clearly in object-oriented programming. Even though I had a lot of problems with C#, it made it a lot easier for me to get started in Java, because the two programming languages have a lot of similarities. Another advantage of C# is the community, which supports you with help and advice. In the net you can find many tutorials about C#. The IDE, i. e. the software that helps you to create software with C#, is Visual Studio, which is available free of charge in the community version on the internet.

PHP

Throughout my entire development period I have always been a loyal companion: PHP. PHP is a server-side programming language based on C. It is used to create websites and web applications. PHP runs on the server and can handle simple tasks such as inserting data into a database, as well as more complex tasks such as displaying web pages based on existing data.

And now?

After I gave you an insight into the different programming languages, it's up to you: What do you want to do?

Do you want to create a website? Then take a look at HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP - preferably in this order, because many things build on each other. A good source for this is W3Schools.

Do you just want to sniff a programming language and create a small application? Then take a look at Java or C#. Especially on YouTube you will find a lot of good tutorials. In my opinion, these are also more meaningful and easier to understand than texts on the Internet.

Thank you for reading up to here. This was my first post of this kind and I am open to improvements! Soon I will go into programming and try to teach some theory and practice.

If you have any questions about specific points or topics, we are happy to discuss them:)

Until then,

Dominik