The Beginning
Imagine being a kid aged between 11-12 years, and you just got your first computer. The excitement is such that you rode your bicycle so fast that you fell once, getting some minor scratches. But you can't feel them because you just want to get home to sit on the chair and use your first computer. Yup, that's how it feels to get your first computer in an Indian middle-class household.
That was the beginning of my interaction with my first computer with an Intel processor and some random graphics card I don't remember, but I just wanted to play games on it 😃
Games sparked my interest in computers more than anything. I used to do everything just to fix those games. They made that kid tech-savvy, dual-booting just to run a game smoothly because the internet said it runs better on Windows XP. The internet was costly back then in India, but I still managed to browse and find fixes, tweaking everything just to understand and replace DLL files. Games taught me more about computers than any school class did.
Fast forward a few years, and I took coding or what they used to say "Information Practices" in my school back then. My teachers were good, but the curriculum was not, which killed my interest in coding. I thought I might not learn it ever now, so I moved on to other high-risk, high-reward endeavors. I'll talk about them some other day.
Again, fast forward three years, and now I am at a point where I want to learn something new, something in which I can deep dive. Thanks to innovation, the internet is so cheap and good in India that I can learn anything.
So, I started watching some videos and found that there are layoffs in tech, hiring freeze, and all sorts of negativity. Being in finance, I learned one thing: Bear runs are the time to prepare; Bull run is the time to sprint. And I found my next high-income skill, which I neglected - coding, coming back.
I knew the journey was going to be hard, but I had principles and fundamentals clear, which I will share with you in this blog. So, let's start.
Special thanks 🙏
This is all possible due to the push @DeniTechh gave me on Twitter, a special thanks to him for doing so.
The Importance of Bhagwad Gita📖
I am a fan of Ray Dalio. If you don't know who he is, you can google or chat GPT it. I respect his philosophy of making principles that remain the same for the things you do in your life. I have learned a lot and made some principles by reading Bhagwad Gita, some of which I will share.
1. Mindset is your biggest strength - I don’t think I need to explain.
2. Always question your understanding, chapter 1 of Bhagwad Gita, will help you find meaning in what you are doing.
3. Be disciplined.
These are some principles Bhagwad Gita teaches us and will come in handy in your coding journey.
How I Learned My First Language and Resources🥅🏹
As I said, always question your understanding. For, when I started, I questioned myself every day with coding concepts, like what is a programming language, why you need it, and what are the common things every programming language has. When a definition or an explanation will be called best.
And the disciplined mindset helped me find answers to these questions. For example, what is common between every programming language? I found that every language has variables, operators, functions, and loops, and uses fundamental data structures such as arrays and conditional statements. To learn in the best way, I found the approach of making it so simplified that even a 10-year-old can understand it, also called the Feynman technique, working very well.
Where to find the best resources? As I explored, I found a simple checklist to understand concepts and their definitions from YouTube.
The checklist was that it should be:
- Short, under 5-10 minutes
- Simple - no jargon shall be used
And using this method, I found some gems while exploring:
Resources🤖💻
1. Bro code - A channel I highly recommend if you are a beginner.
2. Fire Ship - This guy doesn't need an introduction, short, simple, and crisp explanations, also will inform you about the latest tech updates.
3. Web dev simplified - The name is enough for understanding complex topics.
Also, there is much more that I want to share, but I think as of now, this much is good.
If you guys liked this blog, ping me on Twitter to tell me how my first blog was, and I will be happy to share more of what I know, which can help you guys.
It's @InderSChandel2 on Twitter or X :>