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by bizkitgto 2811 days ago
Just out of curiosity, how did you learn to code on your own and what did you build?
1 comments

I built CanadaPups.com.

At first I started to learn by reading Computer Science 101 textbooks. The intro MIT textbook is in python and has more depth than other CS101 books. (Guttag, John. Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python.)

I then went practical, I learnt Ruby on Rails via https://www.railstutorial.org/. It was good to provide me with mental framework of how websites are built... html, coding and database.

For the actual CanadaPups project, I switched from Rails to Django because I found Rails to be too confusing (maybe due to my inexperience at the time).

That's awesome!! How long did it take you to go from zero to launching your website? Did you do this on your free time (were your working full time)?
I worked on it in my free time. I have an non-tech day job. From zero (start reading CS101 book) to launch was 1 year. Could have been less if I didn't abandon my Rails version and re-do in Django.
Nice! Are you still working in your non-tech day job, or have you switched careers? I’m thinking of learning Rails as my first foray into programming.
I'm still in my non-tech day job. Not planning on switching. Just a side project for fun (and profit). I think the Rails Tutorial is a good way to learn basics even if you end up using javascript (react or whatever later on). Ruby is my favorite language, but Django (in Python) suits me well.