Who Should Learn Programming and How

The topic of “entering IT” is very tired now. Every season we hear loud calls that everyone must switch to IT and learn to code. Or we hear disappointed complaints that jobs do not exist and questions about why everyone runs to this field.

The First Axiom: The Market and Money

Here is the first axiom that guides the rest of this text:

IT is an economic sector. People make all key decisions here based only on money.

Stop here and think about the result:

More people entering the field means higher entry competition and lower pay for beginners.
The IT market is global. Salaries are global, but competition is worldwide too.

The main warning: if you learn programming only for quick and easy money, stop right now. Look for other reasons or pick another career field.

How to Choose Your First Language

People always disagree about the first language:

Some advise starting with simple scripting languages.
Others demand “hardcore” low-level C or Assembly.
Marketing courses tell you that building web layouts is the easiest way in.

A person with no experience gets lost in this noise. But there is no single answer. Your choice depends on who you are and why you need code.

If You Are in School

Start with a tested teaching tool: Pascal (FreePascal).

C could be the ideal language to understand how systems work. But C causes too much stress for a school student: pointers, address math, segfaults, and undefined behavior traps.

Niklaus Wirth designed Pascal specifically for teaching programming[cite: 4, 5]. Pascal builds strict type discipline, requires clean structure with procedures and functions, and shows clearly how the program runs. You can easily build many algorithm tasks, console tools, and simple text games in FreePascal. It gives you a strong base. Later, you will move to C or C++ much more easily and consciously.

If You Want Automation, Data, or AI

Choose Python. It is a great general tool for practical tasks.

Python helps you write scripts to remove daily routine tasks: rename files automatically, scrape data from websites, and process spreadsheets. Also, developers build the whole modern AI ecosystem around Python. They also use it for automation in engineering tools, such as 3D software (Blender) and CAD design systems (FreeCAD).

If You Want Hardware and Electronics

Choose C or C++. They are the standard working languages for microcontrollers and microelectronics. Authors write most documentation, drivers, and libraries for them.

If You Like the Web

Your programming language here is JavaScript. But it does not live alone in the browser. You must learn document structure (HTML) and styling (CSS) at the same time. Learn them together as one stack and do not fear the size of the topic.

If You Want Fast High Income in IT

Learn English. And at the same time, ask yourself honestly: do you really need this?

The Second Axiom: How to Study the Right Way

Information is everywhere: hundreds of platforms, thousands of books, millions of videos[cite: 4, 5]. But without the right method, they help very little.

Programming is a craft and a practical skill.

You cannot learn to swim by reading a book about water on your couch. You learn programming only through practice: by building real tasks and projects.

The 80/20 Rule in Learning

You learn best when you pick a project where you already know how to build about 80% of it:

If you know 100% of the topic: you learn nothing. You stay in place and do mechanical work.
If you know less than 50%: chaos, confusion, and imposter syndrome hit you.
The 80/20 ratio gives balance: the known 80% gives you solid ground, while the unknown 20% forces you to read documentation, find answers, and grow.

Sources of Information: What Deserves Your Time

Official documentation. Your main source of knowledge. It is dry, compact, structured, and skips obvious points. Documentation requires active thinking while you read it. Build the habit of reading it from the very start.
Technical books and articles. A book holds the concentrated practical experience of its author. With every new book you read, you find fewer completely new facts, but specific insights become more valuable.
Courses. Courses work well when you need to build basics quickly or organize scattered facts. Also, a good course lets you see a familiar topic through another engineer’s eyes. You can study their architecture style and how they explain ideas.
Videos. This format has low information density. You can always scan text quickly with Ctrl+F and find the answer in 10 seconds. Video forces you to spend half an hour only to see that it lacks a helpful answer. Streams and live coding help only when you want to watch how an experienced engineer thinks while solving an unusual problem. In all other cases, video is too slow for learning the basics.

Summary

If this text did not kill your desire to learn, invent a concrete practical task. Find tools for it, write the code, and move on to the next task.