Hello, world: Learning to code in 2014

Beginning my journey into coding

Hi, my name is Chris, I'm a Maths Graduate from Liverpool in the UK, and I've recently moved to Melbourne, Australia. I've decided that 2014 is the year that I learn to code, program, develop websites and all that jazz, and to that end, I'm using this post to commit to this in a concrete way, and hopefully some of you may want to follow my progress.

Why?

I graduated university a couple of years ago, and, since then, have mostly been working in bars. I've met some amazing friends and had some great times, but, there's always been a voice at the back of my head complaining that I'm not working to the best of my abilities. My brother is a Software Engineer in London and has always encouraged me to explore his area of expertise. I know that it is an area that I'd be interested in and challenged by, and hopefully, eventually, better financially recompensated by than working in bars... Over the next few months or so, I aim to foray into this world and see how much I can learn, and what I can accomplish!

Background

I've been learning bits and pieces about Web Development, Coding, Programming and Computer Science for a while now, but have very limited experience in actually making a finished project. I've had a go with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, C, Ruby and Python, but tend only to have made little standalone pieces. Codecademy, Codewars, the Mozilla Developer Network and edX have all been very useful to me, and I've enjoyed the Computer Science courses I've looked at online. But, now it's time to actually do something!

Getting Started

The best way to learn is by doing, or, that's what people tell me. Because of that, I'm going to just get stuck in making things and deal with the particular obstacles as I come along them. To that end, I'm writing this in "Markdown", a simple language that I have never used before...

Markdown

Markdown is a "text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers", and, whilst I write this, I'm still unsure how I go from this easy to write plain text into an actual page on the actual internet, but, staying true to my "learn by doing" mantra, I'll deal with that when I get to it. At this moment, I'm simply writing in a text editor using the syntax for Markdown which I'm learning from daringfireball.net.

I have a bit of background in HTML, I created and maintained a website for my first ever band (when I was 15), but, things have changed a lot since then. (What do you mean people don't use frames anymore?!) The benefits of Markdown, as far as I've gathered thusfar, is that it takes out the "tag" nature of HTML and uses a much more straightforward plain text formatting that is easy to understand.

Readability of Markdown is emphasized above all else, and so it makes it a natural syntax to choose for writing for the web. It is composed entirely of punctuation characters which means that a Markdown document is readable by the layman, which makes it a great place for me to start getting my teeth stuck in!

The Next Step

So, now I have a document in Markdown syntax, my next step is to actually get it online. After that, my journey has officially started, so, we'll see what happens from then on!