[JacksonD]

I'm 11 and I taught myself how to code. I don't know about College, and I don't learn anything about computers at school, except bore myself silly when the teachers are telling us how to use Microsoft Excel.

I don't know if I will be interested in computers by the time I get to college or whatever.
I really want to keep on learning and get better, I am great at web development, but learning to program.

What do you guys think? Should I study IT and Computers at High School, College or whatever.

I am not sure if this should be posted here.. but..

[NeoTifa]

Do whatever you want. Go for it.

[no2pencil]

Erm, when I was in high-school we didn't really have a lot to chose from. I suggest continuing to self-teach yourself for now, because you won't be in college for another seven years.

[stackoverflow]

I think you're a little young to be worrying about these kinds of things. Have fun, for all you know in a few years you will want nothing to do with computers.

I say have fun, do what you like and the right things will come along.

[modi123_1]

I would be more concerned about the cooties vaccination. Get a chemistry set and work on that - for all of man kind!

What are you interested in besides code?

[stackoverflow]

Ohh the ladies-- they will make you think of things other than code.

[JacksonD]

I'm 11? We are having talks about how babies are made, hormones and puperty. And I should be worried about cooties?

My other hobbies include Wood Craft, Cookery, Sport (My #1), Socializm and uh.. Working for people, and making them sites, databases etc.

I don't sit in my room. Blinds drawm and tap away all day. I probably go on a PC 4 hours maximum each day. Is College like University? In Australia, we don't have "college", We have Primary School (1 year to go), High School, University.

At the High School I am going to, they have a broad range, Computer Programming, Design, Creation (building PCs) Sport, Photoshop and CS5.

I'm almost 12. Some extra facts.

I'm at a Year 9 leval for reading, spelling and english. Year 9 is third last year of highschool, meaning you have been at schoo, for 10 years. As the Prepatory scheme exists over here.

I guess I'm sort of popular at school, for my abilities to finish work quickly, help others, fix their PCs and always be there for laughs. I love sport at my school, I go for a run everynight. I am attending a 10K race this weekend.

Just cleared that up. Not bragging, I don't see myself as a geek nor a nerd. I didn't intend that as bragging just answering your questions and elaborating.

[Shane Hudson]

Excellent, a young person wanting to learn who can actually string sentences together properly!

Your best bet is probably staying self-taught and maybe see if there are any local groups that you could go along to, when I was at home I would go to a monthly web developer meet up (organised by Heart and Sole) which was fantastic!

I should probably also just note that when I was your age I had the same problem. I ended up getting into the Open University (which was fairly hard a minimum age was 18) which has helped me a lot.

You should probably be fine just contributing what you learn to Dream In Code really... push yourself then teach it, a great way to learn!

[JacksonD]

Hmm. I know a local group, I worked with them once and we made a site with other people for a local group/company. They were asking me questions by the end. Not the company, but the people helping.

I wish for a tutor, who can teach me more. I'm sounding like I know a lot. But I'm not very good at programming, I know a tiny bit of PHP. Thats it. Web Devolpment, I know HTML (I guess, I'm a bit of an "expert" at that) CSS (pretty good at that) DHTML (learning a lot about, fell in love with it when I first say it) and I know areas of Javascript. I know a reasonable amount of ASP and ASP.net.

Reasonable as I started 2 months into this year. But I don't know as much as you guys, and most people on this forum. I need someone to teach me. Teaching yourself is hard. Trust me. I don't learn of tutorials on the net. I teach myself from looking at examples, Rewriting them. Adding to them. Waiting a period of time and writing them again.

I'm pretty nice going, Except for one posts that was hugely rude of me, I called some guy DarenR a troll. I almost got banned.

I love seeing and meeting other people that can program/code. I was fascinated when I saw server boxes for the first time in real life.

[stackoverflow]

Why not pick up a nice programming language on your own?

A 'light' language like Python may be nice. I would recommend it over heavy hitters like C or C++. People will not like this, but.. C/C++ require a lot of time in front of a PC to really 'get.' They are by no means simple. Although fantastic and fast, they come with a number of complexities.

You can build a lot of things with a high level language such as Python with half the learning curve. It may be a good language to try out programming.

I would also recommend avoiding strict object oriented languages like Java or C# until you have a little base in programming. Learning object oriented design and programming is hard enough, doing it as a beginner would be even worse.

There are many multi-paradigm languages that support object oriented approaches as well as procedural approaches. Python being one of them-- there are many others.

This post has been edited by stackoverflow: 24 October 2011 - 04:18 AM

[JacksonD]

I am interested in Python. Can you suggest some goods spots to start?

[stackoverflow]

I would say the free book, "A Byte of Python" is a good place to start:

http://www.swaroopch...ble_of_Contents

In addition, there's a site that is pretty easy for a beginner to break into Python.

http://www.pyschools.com/

[JacksonD]

I have printed of a copy of A Byte of Python. Reading that now.
Thanks to you,I'm learning Python.

[modi123_1]

There's also a decent video set on python.
http://www.dreaminco...n-from-scratch/

[JacksonD]

Cheers!