UPDATE 2019-7-6: I was interviewed on this video below, where we mainly talk about my programming career.

Original post (2016-6-5)

A lot of people ask me “What site (or course) did you learn programming?”, the answer is clear, no one.

I’m in a hurry when I want to learn something new, and I had an objective in my mind when I was 13 years old, build a complex Google Chrome extension, which several people could use, so I started to build DescicloApp, a Google Chrome extension to the Uncyclopedia portuguese version, aiming to facilitate the article creation, in the first version its was nothing more than basic links, but you need to start with something simple if you want to create something big.

 

I had build it in just a few days, before it I had build some Google Chrome themes and other simple extensions, so I knew the Chrome extension structure, I have never really liked Hello Worlds (most simple thing to do with something in programming), so I saw the Pixlr extension style and liked it (apparently the extension that I used isn’t on the Web Store anymore), then I found a way to copy its source code and started to remove any code that I didn’t need, I can say that I learned programming doing this in several projects: downloading a source code and removing anything that I didn’t need, remaining just what I need, but always verifying if still working, if not it’s just use the old friend CTRL+Z (when I give programming tips for someone I usually say that the ; (semicolon) is the greatest enemy of them hahaha).

After I have only what I need from that project, I study the code and try to understand what do what, and from that time I start to research a lot, but a lot, I researched things like “how to open links in new tab javascript”, for an experienced programmer it’s obvious, but for a beginner not, since when I study JavaScript at 13 years old, Java and PHP at 17 years old, and C# at 18 years old, I almost always found someone who has the questions as me, and it was there, on the Google StackOverflow, it’s amazing the amount of code that I take from there, in the old days my projects was kind of a puzzle, which the pieces I took in several StackOverflow answers, but when you research the same thing a lot of times you end up memorizing (in my work I started to play with WordPress, and when I made this website I noticed that I already had memorized the main functions).

It was basically in that way I learned programming, learning in that way requires a lot of free time, but from my 13 years old to my 18 years old I practically just went to the school, so I had a lot of free time that I used on Wikipedia to learn computing history and study programming (in my teenager I have never be a fan of games, animes, series, etc, I just wanted to learn about computing).

When I was 19 years old I got my first job, I earned an full programmer Brazilian salary and I’m very proud for what I do, until today I lose myself in Wikipedia reading about important people of computing, softwares and programming languages, and I try to pass my weekends (now I work and I do college, no free time) trying to do my own projects, or programming objectives, I learned and continue to learn in that way, have an objective, start, research, test, conclude, or if don’t know how to start, just copy open source thing and remove what you don’t want hahaha.

Of course do it could be complex for some people, because it a recommend the Codecademy for them to learn programming.

In my CV there are HTML and Java courses, but I started to learn it years before, I can say that the HTML course I just learned how to create tables, and in the Java course I learned… nothing (because I already knew all the content), I just did it to have it in my CV, in courses I learned PHP and C#, that last I learned in a classroom course that I earned from Microsoft (the test to earn was just to answer question about its products and programming logic, the first I knew a lot thanks to the time I spent on Wikipedia hahaha).

folder	Category: Programação
label	Tags: aprendizado, código, conhecimento, emprego, programação