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Full Stack Development for Absolute Beginners

By Denton Zhou
June 2, 2017

I get asked this question a lot: "How did you learn how to build your site?"

Those who know me personally know that I come from a non-programming background. I studied finance and worked in various finance and business roles. Until recently, in fact, the closest thing I did to programming was building Excel models that used IF functions in cells.

At some point and for various reasons I wanted to code, however. I fancied the idea of building software that others could enjoy.

Getting started

I've had my share of false starts. More than a decade ago I bought a book about Flash, tried my hand at ActionScript, and failed. The same thing happened many times with many different languages. Somehow, MIT's Introduction to CS with Python stuck:

This is a difficult course for newbies, which is why if you're really new to programming, you might want to try this introduction first from Udacity:

Within a few months I knew how to make simple algorithms, run simulations, and create interactive command line apps. I started making some simple text adventure games that I thought were kinda cool. When I wanted to share them on the web, however, I hit a wall. I didn't actually know how to make my Python code accessible by others!

A wild goose chase

Python Flask seemed to offer the easiest solution. A simple online tutorial showed me how to

when I actually wanted to share my creations by letting people interact with my apps from a browser... well, I got stuck.

I learned how to do basic things with it. But when I wanted to

Want to turn your Python programs into web sites and apps? Flask is the little framework that can. With a low barrier to entry, tons of handy packages, and a fast start up, Flask is the go to web framework for many Python developers. By the end of the track, you'll know the basics of Python, how to install and start using Flask, how to use a database with Python and your Flask app, and more.

I learned how to build OpenCourser with Treehouse

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