How I Learned To Program

About me

My name is Bamgbose Morayo. I currently work as a Software Engineer.

Why I wanted to learn/how I learned how to program

I started learning how to program with PHP when I was in 200 Level at university. I remember walking up to a friend and seeing all of these words I didn't understand on the black screen of his laptop. I was like, "Dude, what's this?"

He said to me that he is programming. I was very fascinated by what I saw and that strenghtened my curiosity. I got my own laptop, collected some material from him, and I started reading and practicing on my own.

What probably made me so much interested was that on my campus there are very few programmers. The few that are are respected because everyone sees them differently.

Programming is something everyone wanted to do. However, they were not ready to give what it takes.

How I approached learning

I started learning with Appress Beginning PHP From Novice to Professional. Even though I never finished the book, it helped me grow a lot.

What boosted my confidence and proficiency at PHP was an internship I got. It helped me a lot because there I got to learn how PHP was used in the real world.

It was there that I learned and used several PHP frameworks that I never even knew about when I was in school.

CodeIgniter was the first PHP Framework I encountered and then CakePHP. I developed several applications with CakePHP in particular.

Challenges I faced

In the beginning, I had some issues setting up my environment because so many things did not make much sense to me at first. My persistence and curiosity helped me overcome all of those challenges.

My first experience with PHP frameworks was a bit challenging, but I was glad I had some mentors who helped me out.

Key takeaways

The Internship was the major thing that helped me. Though I was not well paid, the money did not matter to me because I was learning a lot and I was so excited about every new thing I learned.

Tips and advice

PHP is a really simple language to learn. But, like anything, in order to excel at it, you must be ready to give it what it takes.

Persistence is the key. Like I said, initially many people want to learn programming. Every now and then, people come to me to for materials on programming that they want to learn.

Eventually, they drop it because they are not ready to give what it takes to overcome challenges they come across in the learning process. Know that every time you solve a problem, you become better.

Final thoughts and next steps

I am so interested in Data Science and Machine Learning. I already took a course on it on Udemy and I hope I can become successful at it as well.