"Being able to teach yourself complex skills and big ideas, is going to be essential to stay ahead"

• Scott H Young, MIT CHALLENGE

Why big ideas ?

In today's world, we live in a knowledge economy. The person who is capable to learn new skills, always teach him self and always learn, is the person who gonnna elevate his life.

Maybe 50 years ago, if you just graduate from high-school, you will be able to land a job so easily, but today, the competition is above the roof, the material that you have to cover is huge! so you won't live with just basic knowledge.

What's the Solution ?

The solution is to put "Long term goals", goals that require learning in-demand complex knowledge, Computer Science for instance, and be patient about taking a year or two or more in order to learn it, because it gonna pay back very well.

Life is hard I know, but if you aren't ready to get uncomfortable and roll your sleeves up to make it better now, then when ?

That's for today, see you in the next one <3

Check the MIT challenge by clicking on it.

The cornerstone of all Computer Science areas, the tool of the tools, and the part that you can't escape if you want to be a good Computerist. My story of learning programming is quite a rollercoaster style, from starting with JavaScript (very bad language to start with!) but without any problem solving, to C++ for a while -thanks for the war that interrupted it-, and ending till now with Java.

I had always had this obsession with perfection, so I wanted to learn the best programming language to start with, but I haven't found it yet well.. BECAUSE IT DOES NOT EXIST! during the war, I did not have a good Internet connection so no online courses. But I really wanted to pursue my learning to CS, so I searched through my archive of "unnecessary .pdf files" and found a textbook on Java called Introduction to Java Programming by Y. Daniel Liang, so I started reading through it, writing a lot of code, and solving a dozens of problems by the ending of each chapter, and here I am with this magnificent book! that am still learning through it up to this day since June 2023 (am currently in CH12: Exception Handling and Text IO).

Long story short, programming is an essential skill everyone who wants to learn CS should acquire it and be good at it.

Here are some tips that will help you start learning programming:

1- Pick a relatively old language

Like Java (I prefer it for its all-OOP style that gonna pay later when learning OOD -gonna talk about it in a later post-), or C++, or C#, maybe Python but I don't prefer it cuz it's super easy except if you are aiming to Data Science or AI or Machine Learning directly without taking a CS journey like me, C also is a good choice but not at the beginning (I am learning it currently in order to start Computer Architecture and Operating Systems Subjects -as usual, in a later post!-).

2- Learn programming deeply

Some subjects can be taken from a short, to-the-point, online video-based course, but programming isn't. So pick a Textbook on the language you want to learn to program with and start going through it slowly and don't rush the results even if it's going to take you months.

3- Code a lot with your hands

You can't learn coding by watching codes on the course or the book you're learning from.

4- Solve a lot of problems

CodeWars and Exercism are good sites, also the end-chapter problems in textbooks are worthy.

VARIABLES, CONSTANTS, DATA TYPES, CONDITIONS, LOOPS, FUNCTIONS, and ARRAYS, are all must-learn concepts that can't be skipped.

OOP gonna has its own post cuz it's another story. Take your time, and don't rush learning.

See you in the next one!

OK, In the beginning, who am I and what is my story?

My name is Hassan Siddig (an Arabic name so feel free to mispronounce it) and am currently 20 years old (September the first), I am Sudanese, if you don't know where Sudan is you have Google to assist you. I graduated from high school about 2 years and a half ago and I felt like a free bird and I could do whatever I wanted, I thought about getting financially independent from my parents and starting to make some money to buy the cool stuff I wanted. So how can I do that?

YouTube was saying that either Graphic design or Programming is a good skill to start with especially if you are a college student so I started with graphic design. After about two months of trying it, I figured out that it's a good skill and a good thing to learn anyway but.. it is just not my thing and the competition is on the roof in it (Especially from our beloved Hindi people :) so I thought it was a nice experience but enough. -by the way, you can find a few of my designs in one of my Instagram highlights, I believe it's called 30DaysChallenge-

After that I started to re-learn about programming, and am saying re- because it's not my first time encountering this field, I came across a YouTube video in 2019 talking about "Programming" and that it's the "Skill of the FUTURE!" and all that glitter took me, but it was a horrible trial! the course started with an online IDE (google also if you don't know what an IDE is) and a mobile screen on the website and a cake picture while we tried to center it with some gibberish code I was LOST, now after some learning i believe the language was Java and it was a normal Online IDE, so I forget about programming for about a year (last year of high school).

Back to programming -again- but now with more opened eyes more information and a better English understanding (I took the IELTS test during the vacation), I realized that programming is part of a bigger field of study called Computer Science and people study it in the university and there is a lot of languages to program with, etc ..

Unfortunately, that was after I got into medicine school.. under my parent will. But I thought hey I can do both! so I started studying computer science in my spare time and things went kinda well, but when I get more taught I realized that CS is a whole world that requires a lot of work and dedication, and that medicine sucks.

After the completion of the first year of college, the War in Sudan started (20/04/2023) during Ramadan. I was displaced with my family to a small Sudanese state called Aljazeera. No stable electricity or Internet.

There where my mentality started, no one gonna help you except yourself, you can cry or get up and learn. I started with learning programming using Java book (gonna talk about this in another post) in parallel with some CS areas like computer architecture and operations and algorithms and a lot more, all in its time. Daily for about 6 months until I could travel to Saudi Arabia.

And here I am! no clear future person learning computer science on his own and blogging about this journey that just started and taking you with me through all the steps and lessons and falls.

As I said in the previous post, am learning from the OSSU curriculum and counting my progress using Time Camp.

I think that is enough for today, if you have any questions please feel free to contact me through any of my social media that are listed on the blog home.

See you in the next one ❤️.

Make sure to follow me and see you in the next one (-:

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}