A newbie's guide to coding

GUIDE

One of the biggest problems with coding and programming with beginners is
how intimidating it can be. This guide explains why coding can appear to be
difficult for those who are unfamiliar with it and how they should approach
learning how to code.

In my experience, I have found that the people who struggle most with
coding are those who are not comfortable with typing. It seems obvious that
this would be the case, but too often do I assume that everyone is good at
typing. So, the first step would be to make sure that you can type on your
keyboard reasonably quickly and be able to identify what each and every key
is and does. Once you have become comfortable enough with typing, then that
is pretty much the bare minimum you need to get started with coding. The
best way to get better at typing is simply by typing more. There are
several ways you can do this: write in a blog or digital journal, engage in
discussions online, practice typing at play.typeracer.com, etc.

Another issue I find with people who are trying to learn to code is their
ignorance of immediately available help such as documentation or search
engines. Often, I find that they rely on a teacher or a friend to help them
with a certain problem when they have not yet considered if they could
possibly solve it themselves, using whatever resources they already have.
My advice would be to find where the documentation is for whatever you are
trying to learn and also learn how to use search engines effectively.

One final piece of advice for newbies is to stop worrying about whatever
programming language, operating system, text editor or IDE you're using
or learning. The most important part of learning how to code is the result
more than how you achieved your result. Just use whatever you feel most
comfortable with and once you can consistently produce results with your own
tools, then you can start exploring other languages, text editors, etc.

TL;DR
1. Learn to type
2. Read documentation
3. Use comfy tools