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General Discussion

Posted by Simas Kasparas
Simas Kasparas
132 Points

Please help me start learning

Hello, Im totally new to coding. Was searching everywhere what coding language should I start learning.

My goal is to be able to make my solutions/ideas come alive thru coding. Example: ebay, craiglist, teamtreehouse. What type of language should I start learning to be able to create these web apps?

Simas Kasparas
Simas Kasparas
132 Points

Some says that I need to learn python, others Ruby on rails and others Php, html, css. So ?? :/

2 Answers

Jon Mirow
Jon Mirow
9,864 Points
Jon Mirow
Jon Mirow
9,864 Points

Hi there, Welcome to treehouse!

All of the examples you've listed are websites, so we're looking at web development, which treehouse is great for! Web development is split into two parts - the code that gets sent to the user (the web page) and the code that runs on the server generating the content for the page. The part that goes to the user is called the "front end" and the part on the server is the "back end".

So in your examples, the front end is everything you see on teamtreehouse.com - this box I'm typing in right now is a textarea box, when I submit it, it will be a paragraph inside a div (most likely).

The back end is the code that's taking the information I type here, adding it into teamtreehouse.com's databases, and serving it to you.

Knowing both front end and back end is called "full stack" development.

The best place to start is front end. It may sound more exciting to do back end, and make all your code happen right away, but you can't do anything with it until you know front end to show it to your users. With that in mind I would recommend clicking on the "Tracks" option on the menu bar above, and start working through the Front End Web Development courses. shortcut here: https://teamtreehouse.com/tracks/front-end-web-development

Once done there, you can work through the Full Stack JavaScript track to start delving into the back end. You'll already know quite a bit of JavaScript from the front end course, so it'll be a much easier place to start with the back end. From there, the sky's the limit! PHP, Ruby, Python, even C# and Java courses are available! (As you can see there's a lot of choice of language for running on the back end, but this will seem a lot less daunting when you get there )

Good luck! :)

Marcus Richard
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Marcus Richard
Front End Web Development Techdegree Student 10,124 Points
Marcus Richard
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Marcus Richard
Front End Web Development Techdegree Student 10,124 Points

I couldn't agree more with Jon. Simas, just like I started with no previous knowledge of coding, however I recently finished the Front Web Development track. It gave me the foundation I needed to start my own projects. My advice is to pick what you want to do and practice that language daily.