Diving into the Rabbit Hole - On Getting into Programming

My first experience in formalized programming study was through Bob Tabor's Channel 9 video series . I went through his introductory HTML5/CSS3, JavaScript, C# for Beginners, and Visual Basic for Beginners videos. In total, about 28 hours of material.

His HTML5/CSS3 and JavaScript laid the foundations for my entrance into Web Development. He provided ample supplemental recommendations to keep learning about the JavaScript space.

At the time of going through the C# and Visual Basic videos I had an idea what was going on with classes, functions and looping. Yet Object-oriented programming sounded daunting. After completing those videos, I realized the coding wasn't THAT bad. I just had no idea how to come up with ideas from scratch, or why a piece of code does what it does. I was purely monkey-see monkey-do. And it wasn't until I started taking Python and server-side JavaScript courses in 2017-18 that I realized how truly basic the Channel 9 courses were when I took them in 2014-16.

I began reading some essays and theoretical books on programming, to try and "get into the mindset" and be sure I knew all the fancy lingo. In 2016 I read Code Complete, The Pragmatic Programmer, Clean Code, and whatever else I could find by the Pragmatic Programmers. I felt strange: I was reading ABOUT coding, and getting familiar with all the terminology and theory, but I wasn't actually DOING anymore. While mindset is important, what's more important is getting dirty and actually coding. I couldn't let myself sink into the inertia of passive reading.

Now mind you I was still working a full-time position in the accounting department so I was limited to the commute and lunch break for consuming material. Perhaps at that stage books made sense. Luckily we are excel heavy at work so I was able to play with macros and formulas so my coding skills didn't atrophy completely.

In 2017 I decided to finally take some video courses that went into more detail than syntax basics of the language as Channel 9 did.

I don't know what it's like for a CS grad to choose a language, perhaps they stick with Java because that's what their professors told them to code homework in. Now I had the paradox of choice. The myriad of answers all conflicted.

"Learn Java, it's used everywhere!"
"No, the barrier to entry is too high, the market's flooded! Learn C# if you want enterprise!"

"Ruby is king of the web!"
"No PHP is!"
"You're both wrong, JavaScript is winning in the WebDev space, especially with SPA!"

"What about Microsoft?"
"LOL I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. I only program in Kali Linux with PERL. Seriously dude??"

Maybe I exaggerate (a bit), but I couldn't get stuck in the debates on the merits of all these different languages or programming paradigms. Time was ticking and I had to make a decision....