7 basic things need to know when learning something new in programming

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Recently I am learning the ReactJS framework made by Facebook; During the learning process, I have organised 7 important things we need to know when we are learning a new programming language, platform or framework;

learning programming

Data

First we should learn about how to manipulate the data, here are somethings to learn about data:

  • How to define Local, Class or Global Variables
  • How to define Constants
  • How to use different data types, e.g Integer, String, …
  • How to define Structure or Class
  • How to deal Data Structure like, Array, Hash, Stack, Set, ..
  • How to save or load data from File / Network / Database / Memory / …
  • How to convert data from one type to another, e.g String to Number

Example:

var counter = 0;
const MAX_VALUE = 1234567;

Reference:

Output

After we know about Data, we should know how to show those data to us. This is an interesting task;

There are lots of ways to do outputs, here are some of them:

  • Showing the data in the system log
  • Present the data in the screen
  • Present the data by animation (mixing time and data)
  • Make the device shaking
  • Make some sound;
  • Sending Data to server through network;
  • Output some signals to make a robot dance; (e.g LEGO MindStorm)

The basic things we should learn about Output are:

  •  How to show string in console log;
  • How to build User Interfaces and display result on it
  • How to writing data to file
  • – How to send requests to the network (e.g HTTP request)

Example:

console.log(“Hello Javascript console”);

Reference:

Input

In order to interact with the users of the program, we need to learn about the INPUTs;
There are many examples of INPUTs, such as:

  • From Joystick and Buttons (e.g Early Video Games)
  • From Keyboard and mouse.
  • User choices or text from GUI
  • Binary or textual data from files
  • Visual data from camera (e.g Kinect n is capturing the body figure using camera)
  • Touches or Gesture on mobile screen
  • Fingerprints
  • and more…

The basic things we should learn about Input are:

  • How to get inputs from GUI (e.g button, text field, selection box)
  • How to get inputs from Device Events (e.g keyboard event, mouse event)
  • How to get inputs from File
  • How to get inputs from Network (e.g Calling HTTP request)

Example:

<input type=”text” onChange={this.inputChanged}/>

Logic

The above section talked about Input, Output and Data. They are all the essential parts of a program; However, an program cannot do amazing things without Logic. It will be just like a photocopier, bring the data from input and then show it in output, which is not fun.

Things we should learn about Logic are:

  • Repeat (for, while) – which is repeat a procedure many time;
    Example: convert list of png image to jpeg
  • Flow control (if-else, switch, continue, break) – do different logic for different condition;
    Example: If password is correct, let to enter the system, or else say “Authenication Failed”
  • Data Conversion – Data conversion is to convert pieces of data from one form to another; Example: converting a PDF document to images, convert objects to texts in order to save;

Module

One of the important technique in problem solving is breaking down a problems in to many smaller problems; In programming, it is similar, our program should be broken into smaller pieces of code, which called “Module”;  The language makers usually provides ways for us to make modules;

These are the common forms of the module:

  • Function or Method
  • Class
  • Library or Framework

Things we should learn about Module are:

  • How to define those function, method and class;
  • How to use them;
  • How to build and package a library that can be reused in other projects;

Mechanic

A program is a piece of binary data passed to an executor to perform the actions we want the system do;

If we are writing a simple C program, the mechanic is easy; The system will call the main() function and then follow the logic you defined in your program;

However, if we are writing mobile app like iOS and Android, the system not just calling main(); We are extends a base component provided by the framework; For example, In Android, our program should be extended the Activity class. And the core system will call methods named “start”, “stop”, “resume”, “pause” in different situations; And these are what we need to learn about;

Things we should learn about Mechanic are:

  • What is the life-cycle of the language / system you are writing to
  • Which methods will be called and when will they being called.

Example:

Resource

When we learning a new language, you may be not very familiar with it; Therefore, we need to collect different kinds of resource helping us understand the fundamental and tackle different problems during our coding;

The following resources are very useful when learning a language or framework:

  •  Official Home Page – It usually tells you how to start, tutorial and detail documents;
  • Sample Code – Some programmers like me will find source code are more easier to read;
  • Documentation – It helps you know more about the module that you are using;
  • Tutorial Site – There are many good tutorial sites nowaday; Those site provide tutorials more easier than those from the official one
  • Open source projects – There are many good open source projects in GitHub or Google Code which give us hint about how a whole project should be;
  • Community – Usually Facebook groups or stackoverflow can give you great supports and help you solve problems;

Finally

To a new language or system well, we should practice by writing more code using that;

 

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