How I’d Learn to Code If I Could Start Over (ft. ChatGPT)
Here’s how I’d learn to code in 2023.
2023 is a good year to learn to code.
Why? Well, now you don’t need to waste time searching for coding answers on Google or wait days to get your question answered on StackOverflow.
Now you can simply ask ChatGPT any coding question 24/7 and get answers quickly. This AI tool will definitely speed up your learning, but there are other things you should know to be on the right track in your coding journey.
In this guide, I’ll show you how I’d learn to code if I could start over in 2023.
Note: ChatGPT might sometimes generate incorrect information, so if you suspect something isn’t right, double-check the answer by asking the same question to somebody else.
Stage 1: Start With an Easy Programming Language
If I could choose my first programming language, I’d start with a language that would gently get me into the world of coding.
This is very important because you don’t want to feel frustrated so often when learning to code! Instead, your first programming language should easily help you learn core coding concepts that will be essential regardless of what you learn coding for.
Most people consider JavaScript and Python good choices to start learning to code. If I had to choose between them, I’d choose Python because of its simplicity and versatility.
Here are some things you can do with Python:
- Data Science & Data Analysis
- Web Development
- Machine Learning
- Artificial Intelligence
As a beginner, you might have a vague idea of what you want to specialize in the future, but that might change throughout your journey. Now you might want to become a Machine Learning engineer, but then you could make up your mind and go for web development.
That happens to many of us!
However, if you learn a multi-purpose language like Python, you could still apply what you’ve learned in the area you’re interested in. Once you have a strong foundation in one programming language, you can move on to learning another language and popular frameworks in your field.
To learn Python, I’d watch free tutorials and buy Python courses that help me master the core coding concepts. In fact, here are some free and paid courses I’d take if I could start over.
How to Boost Stage 1 with ChatGPT
As beginners, we always have questions that feel embarrassed to ask.
We don’t need to keep those questions to ourselves anymore. In fact, we can ask ChatGPT even the dumbest coding question we have!
Say we forgot how to merge dictionaries with Python. Here’s how ChatGPT can help you.
I wouldn’t say that was a “dumb” question, but now we have the freedom to ask whatever we want because a bot will never judge how dumb or repetitive our question is.
ChatGPT can also assist you in your online lectures.
Say you’re watching a lecture from an online course and something isn’t working as shown in the video. Instead of waiting until your busy online instructor fixes the issue, you can make ChatGPT analyze the entire scripts provided in the courses to see what was the issue.
You no longer have to leave a question and wait days to get a reply. You won’t be stuck on a coding problem for hours like in the past!
Besides, with ChatGPT you could start a long conversation as if it was your private teacher.
You can ask for a detailed explanation. You can ask for alternative solutions. You can ask for examples.
Just don’t hold back and let your curiosity run free.
Stage 2: Learn to Automate Stuff
Something that will help you learn your first programming language while having fun is to automate tasks.
When we learn something like coding, there’s always that first excitement that keeps us going no matter what, but that excitement stage is short and then we don’t know what to do next.
This is bad because we need to keep practicing to master our first programming language. Practice is key to remembering technical things. According to the learning pyramid, we remember 75% when practicing, which is a lot compared to the information we retain after listening to a lecture or reading a book.
What some people do to practice is start solving projects.
That’s a good idea, but the problem is that they get too excited and start with complex things such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, or a project that involves both the back end and the front end.
That’s too much if you’re a beginner! You might end up slowing down your learning and frustrated.
A better idea is to apply our knowledge to something easy yet useful for our lives. This helps us get a sense of achievement that keeps us going even when we reach a plateau.
Automating our everyday tasks can easily provide this sense of achievement.
Everyone has some repetitive and boring tasks that we need to do on a daily basis. Instead of wasting time doing it manually, we could let our computer take care of those tasks with the help of some lines of code.
Python has hundreds of libraries that we can use to automate our life. You only need to come up with a fun project to keep you motivated!
In this article, I listed some automation projects I like with their solution.
How to Boost Stage 2 with ChatGPT
Come up with a project that will keep you motivated and use ChatGPT to give you the steps on how to automate that task. In that way, you’ll know the libraries you need to learn and the steps you have to follow.
In case you’re trying to solve a project on your own, you can use ChatGPT to review your code and check:
- Readability in your code
- Efficiency in your code
- Ask to debug your code
As a last resort, you can make ChatGPT write the entire script to automate a task and learn from the solution.
Stage 3: Solve Projects
Solving projects is key to learning to code.
Projects provide an opportunity for you to practice and apply the concepts and skills you have learned. It’s not enough just to memorize a bunch of functions. You should apply them to a project!
You could start with well-known projects that already have a solution on a YouTube video and then move on to unique projects that are about topics you like.
Here’s a list of projects with their solution. Pick one of them based on the topics you like and the field you’re interested in.
- 6 Python Projects You Can Finish in a Weekend
- 5 Solved end-to-end Data Science Projects in Python
- 4 Web Scraping Projects
Once you solved a well-known project, come up with a unique project and solve it from scratch. For example, as a football fan, I had fun predicting the FIFA World Cup 2022 with a simple model using Python.
How to Boost Stage 3 with ChatGPT
ChatGPT can guide you toward the solution of a project. First, pick up a project and break it down into small pieces. If you’re not able to do it, ask for help from ChatGPT.
I’d use my football project as an example. To break down this project, I’d ask ChatGPT
I want to predict the winner of football matches using Python. What steps should I follow?
Now you can start a conversation to understand things much better. For example, ChatGPT split my project into 8 chunks. First, it’s telling me to gather data, so I can ask
where can i find this data?
if you’re not happy with the answer, you can ask again. For example, if I want to scrape websites to obtain football data, I need the links, so I can ask
can you provide the links of such websites?
This helps you come up with an approach to solve a project on your own.
Once you start writing code to solve a project, you might get stuck. Here’s when you can google the question, check StackOverflow, ask people on Discord, or, of course, use ChatGPT to debug your code.
Stage 4: Solve Coding Problems
An important step in learning to code is solving exercises.
Websites such as LeetCode and Codewars have plenty of exercises available in many programming languages and in levels from beginner to advanced.
You can try to solve them on your own and then check out the solution and if something is unclear, you can make ChatGPT solve the exercise and explain in detail anything you want.
I’d also start solving coding interview problems.
No matter how good at coding you are, if you want to get a job, you need to start solving interview problems.
On YouTube, there are many videos that solve common coding interview problems. You might even come across questions that were asked by big tech companies like Google and Facebook.
Those are the 4 stages to learn to code! Let your coding journey begin.
Join my email list with 20K+ people to learn how to use AI to improve your everyday life.
If you enjoy reading stories like these and want to support me as a writer, consider signing up to become a Medium member. It’s $5 a month, giving you unlimited access to thousands of Python guides and Data science articles. If you sign up using my link, I’ll earn a small commission with no extra cost to you.