What should I really be learning?

Tony,

You are not alone, and this forum is packed with your "programming friends" ;) . So you are definitely on the right track. There are a lot of skill sets and a lot of different options when you take up programming. Most developers I know have decent skills with several languages and a very solid grasp of one.

That being said, what is it that you would like to achieve? If you are interested in doing front end and user experience, I would direct you to jQuery, html, and CSS. You mentioned that you are not a huge fan of JavaScript, but in web design and development, JS is a lynchpin.

You also mentioned that you are interested in getting a dynamic site up -- that is a site that changes depending on user input, yes? For this you need at least a fundamental grasp of some server side scripting. PHP, Rails, and Python are major ones. PHP is a great language, and Wordpress is built primarily in PHP, so if you want to advance with WP development, that's a good route. It is also fairly simple to launch a WP site as most hosting solutions have a 5 second install.

As a matter of opinion, I would advise anyone who is starting out to learn nodeJS. There's a great introduction as well as some more advanced tutorials. Between AJAX, JSON, the numerous JS frameworks, jQuery, and nodeJS as a server side JS solution, you would be well advised to get very familiar with JavaScript.

I hope this helps!

Hey Tony,

Let me speak from my personal experience. I've been on Treehouse for almost a year now and I still feel like there is a ton for me to learn. It is definitely a progression, so DONT RUSH IT. My advice would be to complete one of the tracks first. This will build a good foundation in which to expand. It's pretty overwhelming trying to take in everything at once (that's exactly what I tried to do) and with so many options it will be easy to give up. As for the community aspect, I'm not sure where you live, but try sites like meetup.com. When I first moved to DC, I immediately found a group of cool developers. Believe it or not, they don't care how much you know and most love to share knowledge. Practicing is definitely KEY! You've heard it your whole life, but it couldn't be more true when it comes to programming. I try to spend a little bit of time (at least 30 min -1 hrs) a day learning or writing on my own. Try using tools like Sublime txt editor and sites like codepen.io. These resources made the process much more interactive and boosted my interest in learning. Let me know if you have any questions, glad to share what I know. Good luck!

Justin

I agree with what Tony and Justin said, but I also found that being able to talk to someone in person about your programming questions is a very big advantage. I suggest looking for a programming group in Meetup.com. Most places have some sort of group of programmers that meets up to network, show each other what they're working on and generally help each other out. If there isn't a group, start one!

Besides having programming friends in your hometown, there are other great resources. The forum here is excellent, but I'm guessing that some of the questions you have are not really fit for the forum format. If you have some more general questions that you would like to talk through with a professional over the phone, I highly recommend Clarity.fm. You can get on the phone with someone usually for a pretty cheap price and the advice I've gotten on it has always been solid.

My last piece of advice, but perhaps the most important: Just make websites and set yourself up to make things that are above your skill level. Get yourself into trouble and break sh*t. Get stuck on problems, bang your head against your desk and troll stack overflow answers like a desperate man. I know it sucks, but that's how most of us learned :)

Hey guys,

Thanks a lot for the responses above, much appreciated!

I have just taken a look at meetup.com - I am from Leeds, Yorkshire in the UK. (Northern England)

There is what seems to be a small group which do these meetup things, I would probably like to learn more before going there as I would like to be able to help other people too rather than sitting there embarrassed, I took a look at a few of their members and a lot were full time web developers or something web-related. My full-time job and web development are two different worlds, I sell building materials to builders 11 hours a day then go home and learn code. So separating myself from the two worlds can be testing sometimes. Plus us Yorkshire Men are an introvert bunch who mind our own business, breaking the trend can be nerving haha.

(On a plus, my employer lets me work on websites/read when all the work at my full-time job is done up in his office)

Reading the above, I think I'm going to finish the track I'm on which is 'Front End Web Development' - I have about 24 hours left of it, I'm currently on jQuery, then kind of pick things to learn more in-depth with the parts I feel I struggle the most on or as I come across it. Instead of starting one, being thrown off and starting something else.

I will make a note of the clarify.fm and hopefully it will come in useful in the future, thank you!

nodeJS sounds interesting and something I always read about on Hacker News, tend not to read in to it too much as I'm scared I'll start learning that too, but it's definitely something I want to cover, my problem is I want to learn everything and I want to learn it now. I have a CSS/HTML Basics & Javascript book by Jon Duckett which I have yet to read so might dive straight in to the Javascript one (Fairly confident with CSS/HTML and assume I'll pick up the CSS as I need it)

I hear so many good things about python and rails and so little about PHP, but wordpress uses PHP, so I guess I'll have to learn that, although I feel it will be outdated in a few years, could be wrong. I'm hoping learning PHP will help me grasp python and rails in the future (the logic rather than syntax) hopefully.

I've paid/used free themes, worked them to what I need and filled them with content and logos, some I've completely re-vamped and change a lot of the layout and some I've just tweaked, I pay for some servers per month and register or transfer friends domains on to them and make them a website, I know a LOT of people who need a website or are interested in what I'm trying to do and I explain I'm trying to learn and play with things, but I've made some of them a website and they pay me £10 a month for hosting it on my servers, I have 12, started 3 month ago. It's making me a steady monthly profit. So I kind of what to build on that.

Thanks for your responses again and thanks for any more. I can talk for England.