Articles
Programming and IT
Self-study plans for getting into programming and neighbouring IT fields — what to install, which tasks to start with, which projects to build and how to check your code without a mentor.
One framework for any direction#
Whatever language or career you choose, the path is made of the same parts. First, a working environment: a code editor, an interpreter or compiler, a terminal. Then the basics: variables, conditions, loops, functions, data structures. Next, small programs you write yourself rather than copy from a lesson. Only after that come frameworks, libraries and portfolio projects.
The second shared part is a developer's habits: keeping code in a Git repository, making small meaningful commits, writing tests for your functions, reading the official documentation before retellings in blogs. A tester, an analyst and a machine learning engineer need these habits just as much as a backend developer.
How to use the articles#
Each article is a separate plan: what to install, first programs, stages by weeks and months, project ideas and ways to check yourself. If you have not chosen a direction yet, start with the general article on programming from scratch — it explains how to choose a first language. SQL and Linux basics are useful in almost any IT career, so it is convenient to learn them alongside your main direction.
- Programming and IT
git log
git log shows history: which commits brought the repository to its current state. Without options the output is wordy and nearly useless, but a few flags turn it into a search tool — by author, by date, by file and even by a line of code that has disappeared.
- Programming and IT
git commit
A commit is a saved state of your project with an author, a timestamp and a message. git commit takes what you selected beforehand with git add and writes it into history as one indivisible piece.
- Programming and IT
Git commands
Git has well over a hundred commands, but on an ordinary day you use about twenty. Here they are in the order you need them — from your first copy of a repository to undoing a bad step — with one line of explanation each.
- Programming and IT
git clone
git clone takes an entire repository from a server — with all its history, branches and tags — and puts a copy into a new folder on your computer. It is how you start working on any existing project, yours or someone else's.
- Programming and IT
git checkout
Historically `git checkout` does several unrelated things at once: it moves your working copy to another branch, creates a branch and pulls a single file out of a commit. Because it was so overloaded, Git 2.23 added two separate commands — `switch` and `restore`. Here are both sides: the old way and its modern replacement.
- Programming and IT
Git branches
A Git branch is a movable pointer to a commit, not a copy of your files. That is why creating one costs nothing, and the git branch command is what you use to list, create, rename and delete branches.
- Programming and IT
Arduino for beginners
Arduino is a microcontroller board you can tell when to light an LED and when to read a sensor. You write the program in simplified C++, upload it over USB, and it runs on its own, without a computer. Your first blinking LED takes about twenty minutes.