Let'ssss get sssstarted!

A Little introduction to this new series I thought of, while in the shower.

Teach & Learn is a new series I wanted to make for my blog AND for all that follow me in dev.to. I have always learned a new topic quicker when I learn to teach. It seems strange, but I enjoy teaching. Well, it's not strange to enjoy that, what is strange is that although I love to teach, I have no desire to be a teacher. Okay, I should clarify more. I DO LOVE TEACHING, but not in the traditional "get paid to be a teacher" kind of way. I just love teaching as a tool to learn.

In practice this would mean at school, I would join a study group and be fascinated by teaching what I learned in new and exciting ways to my study buddies. I found that focus to drive my desire to study much better than studying to understand on my own.

In this series, I am going to be 1 or two steps ahead of you in learning a programming language and I will add blog posts as I go to help give examples, code snippets, code along, and strange and maybe funny analogies to help you think about these concepts in a new way. I am not a pro at programming, although this is my career. I have been programming, professionally for almost 2 1/2 years now, I still have a lot of learning ahead of me, So join me!

For my first language of choice for no real reason other than I like being popular and Monty python and top 10 lists of programming languages articles... okay I am kidding. I actually chose Python because two Christmas' ago I got into Python while buying a raspberry pi and learned how to tinker with microboards whilst searching for a job. I also thought Python would be a good choice because the syntax¹ is super simple to follow, and it's a good language to learn some programming basics. I will be adding code snippets, footnotes for words that you may need clarification on, like the footnote below, and other helpful hints to help you grasp what the heck I am talking about.

Although I love writing, I am terrible at spelling, grammar, and sentence structures. So forgive me for not following any sense of structure with these blogs. Although I am writing these to help the community, I am also writing to help myself grow in consistency with learning programming outside of work.

Here are some helpful resources to get you started! I will not be going over how to download Python, pick a text editor, how to run the code. I will be focusing on the language itself. Also, I will be using Python version 3+. Here is a good resource if you are completely new to programming: Non-Programmers Python Guide.

Let's get started!

1. This is the first footnote. Congrats you found it! Anyways, Syntax, what do I mean by Syntax? Syntax refers to the spelling and grammar of the programming language. Like syntax in languages used between humans, the syntax is important to follow in regards to programming languages too. One thing you have to know is that COMPUTERS ARE STUPID! Seriously, humans can usually figure out what someone is talking about, even if they misspell, say the wrong word, etc because they can see the meaning in the context of everything said! Computers can't. You have to spell out every single step, explain every single aspect of what you want your program to do, or your program won't do it.  ↩