Ask HN: How Can I Learn Programming From The Ground Up?

10 points

16 years ago

Most of the people here on HN have extensive coding experience, and are deeply proficient in creating working code that actually does the job. I do know that reaching that level of proficiency requires years of dedicated keyboard bashing, but as a new entrant something has been bothering me.

I've been trying to make a web app in PHP, and I bought one of those popular books on it (http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-PHP5-Programmer-Dan-Squier/dp/0764557831/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_a). It was quite okay, but it didn't give me what I was looking for. I want to actually understand what I am doing from the grounds up. For e.g.I wish to understand how TCP/IP works. So, that I know what is happening to my HTTP request after I send it and how I can take advantage of its capabilities. I also wish to understand other things like understanding how an RDBMS is implemented. So, that I can make better code to access data from it more efficiently are also a part of this.

In general I want to know why I am doing what I am doing. Some of this knowledge requires years of actual experimentation to gain, and I am ready to do that, but what I am looking for is a good platform from which I can start.

Can you suggest any ways/resources to do this? (This also applies to programming in general)

P.S. - I put this up on HN because there is a lot of noise out there, and it is hard for me as a n00b to differentiate between seemingly good advice/resources and actual good advice/resources.

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11 comments