Hey guys! This year I enrolled in my first year of Computer Science. It's nice but it seems like the first semester is all about math and very little programming involved.

The math is easy because I took advanced math in school and it's pretty much the same thing but I want to start programming my own stuff too. 

We are going to start with Phyton and Java in December but even then, it seems like it's only going to be the basic. Any recommendations?

thenewboston on youtube is good for java i been told

codecademy is pretty good.

thenewboston on youtube is good for java i been told

 

 

codecademy is pretty good.

 

where did you guys start? :P

where did you guys start? :P

 

codecademy but then i took a few courses lol

 

codecademy undoubtedly gave me a fantastic boost in my courses though, ended up getting like A+s and As in all of them

Edited September 26, 20169 yr by Imateamcape

Yeah codecademy is what was used as a base learning tool even in my 2nd/3rd year media courses at my faculty.

 

Great platform to learn with accurate feedback. Can always go back and redo stuff too.

I personally didn't care for CodeAcademy much. I felt like the practice problems left me feeling unable to expand upon the concepts that I had learned due to the limited scope that was taught.

 

For language, I personally started with Python and would recommend Python to start vs Java. Java is a great language, but has a higher learning curve to get you started. When learning the very basic concepts, removing as many roadblocks as possible is more beneficial than learning all the nitty-gritty details of statically-typed languages (like Java) since all core concepts (variables, conditionals, loops, functions, classes, etc.) will transfer between languages (as long as you stick within Object-Oriented languages like Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, C++, etc).

 

I learn really well from reading, so I enjoyed going through https://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ (free).

 

CodeSchool (paid) and Treehouse  (paid) are both video-tutorials with in-browser code environments like CodeAcademy, but they both take a more project-oriented approach. I really like that since building some sort of application is much more real-world. I also thought their instruction was straight up better. They both have 30-day free trials, so you should definitely give one a shot. Often times websites like that have discounts (or are free) for students as well!

 

Hope that helps. I'm happy to answer any more questions as well. 

I learn by books, especially ones that have assignments and the examples online. You learn a lot of theory and have some practice from them. You could check those out.