How I Learned Programming Languages at University. (April~January)

March ~ 

I started to read "The Self-Taught Programmer: The Definitive Guide to Programming Professionally" by Cory Althoff. It tells me what programming is and how to code program using Python programming language. I think the book is really good but is a bit difficult for complete beginners because it is packed tons of information about HTML, Bash, Algorithm, Git, Regular expression, Python, Data structure and more. I would say you should put another easy programming book on your desk. It helps you to learn more faster way.

Then I studied Machine Learning on Coursera https://www.coursera.org,  that is a well known online course founded by Stanford. At that time I hadn't had a learning experience in English especially studying about something new. I tackled it and tried to absorb new things in every episode. The course itself is very informative and beneficial for me. Everything was new to me from linear regression to Neural Network. I learned a lot. This course uses Octave used in numerical programming. It was challenging for me to learn two new concepts at the same time, Octave and Machine Learning in English.

April ~ June

In April, the Spring Semester had started. I took a scientifical programming course that uses Fortran as a first programming language. Fortran is a considerably old language created in 1954. Even now
it is widely used in the science field, the structure of Fortran is quite difficult and tough to learn first. I think it's a bad idea to use Fortran as a first programming course because of its difficulty. From April to June, I didn't study programming much because there were lots of subjects to study in the first semester. 

October ~ January

Fall semester had started in October. In this semester, I took a second scientifical programming course that uses C language. C is the most famous programming language in the world. It is used in every field from industry to academia. There was a problem though. This class is a SCIENTIFICAL programming course. So I could learn what is C, what is Fortran, what is a variable and what is object-oriented programming, but I couldn't learn how to make something using these programming languages. 

I would say that it's better to learn to code while creating their own products because these class told us just a knowledge that is difficult to expand. Although it's challenging to teach such a class, I believe that making something from scratch is the most effective way to learn program.

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