Hi, I'm Rosie in San Antonio, TX. Just want to introduce myself. I'm starting this from scratch. I am currently a technical writer wanting to move into coding.

Question

anonymous · Answer

Start with online tutorials. You can learn interactively how to program with something like Python.
Basically, there are websites that give you a box you type into and press "GO" and it will test the code. They give hints line by line for how to get things to work. Alternatively, learn Javascript (not to be confused with java) as it will help with web development. There are ALWAYS jobs for a web developer, and the fun is, you get to design how it looks!
If you are a technical writer, you are probably the type that loves to spend time making things look perfect rather than just making it work, which us engineers suck at.
Good luck!
Just google "Interactive (insert programming language) tutorial"

anonymous · Answer

I am replacing a recent post, this is the one you should start with. A Gentle Intro to Python, from MIT. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-189-a-gentle-introduction-to-programming-using-python-january-iap-2008/

rosiec · Answer

Thanks so much for thee cellent direction!

anonymous · Answer

Do you have a pc, a mac or linux?

rosiec · Answer

I have a Mac and a Raspberry Pi (Debian)

anonymous · Answer

Nice. Have you ever heard of Homebrew, it is a package manager for Mac? For mac or debian you can just run python files from terminal. I use sublime text as my editor. So cd into your working folder, and run python myfirstpythonfile.py.

anonymous · Answer

When you run some py files from tutorials etc. you may not see any output in terminal. If there is no print in the file the easiest thing to do is to wrap the function in a print statement. This may seem confusing now but once you start you will understand what I mean. For a really fast start/get your feet wet, go check out Zed Shaw's Learn Python the Hard Way.

anonymous · Answer

Here is very useful link, it is actually how I ended up at MIT Courseware in the first place. http://pragmaticstartup.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/how-i-am-learning-python-from-scratch/