168: Your Guide To Computer Programming. Part 3 of 4.

Why should you learn how to program? What is programming? What specific steps can you take? How can you apply programming? This episode shares the following major aspects you can consider and it allows you to think about these from two different viewpoints – either starting a new project or joining an existing project that’s already established. Platform – have you considered the differences between a native application vs. a web application? Or maybe you just need a script or you can combine two or more existing solutions together. Configuration – how will you allow your application to adapt to environment differences, respond to administrative control, and allow users to provide their own preferences? Extensibility – will you allow your application to grow and change based on enhancements or new adaptations? Testing – how will you ensure that your code works as expected? Data storage – where and how will your application store information? Versioning – how will your application deal with different development versions and eventually different customer versions? Documentation – how will you deal with both documentation for internal development as well as for customers? Version control – what systems and tools will you use to keep track of your source code? How are changes reviewed and approved? Bug and issue tracking – how will you keep track of work items, customer requests, and bugs? How will you identify and troubleshoot bugs when they do happen? Requirements – how will you keep track of what the customer actually requires and map that back to individual features and changes? Communications – How will the various components send and receive messages. Listen to the full episode or you can also read the full transcript below. Transcript There’s different ways I could go with this episode and my first thought is to encourage you to be consistent, curious, and to experiment with specific goals. In other words, take action right away and get started and then don’t stop. Maintain a steady pace with your learning and even if you spend just an hour a week, you’ll be surprised at how far you’ll progress after three to four months. It also helps if you get involved with others learning how to program because you’re sure to face resistance from friends and even family. It’s hard to change and we naturally resist change within ourselves and in the people we know. I’ll be starting the live weekend classes again once things settle down a bit more from the move to New York. Right now, my weekends are still occupied arranging things. This is a great way for you to get the support you need to begin programming or take your skills to a new level. I’ve already went over these topics in early episodes. And while I’ll surely discuss them again in the future, for today, I want to explain some different specific steps you can take. Let’s divide this episode into two halves. In the first half, I’ll share steps you can take to help you program a new project. One you haven’t started yet but already have an idea. In the second half, I’ll share some steps that will help you be more productive when starting on a project that’s already quite far along. You can use recommendations from either of these extremes to fit your specific needs. Both of these halves could be further divided based on your current skill level and experience and even by the expected size of the project when completed. I’m not going to go into all of that and will instead focus on what a more experienced programmer might consider. Don’t worry, if you’re just starting out, I’ll also recommend a couple places to start. Okay, you have an idea. I’m going to assume this is something you can at least get started on by yourself. It’s a whole different story if you need a team of programmers