If you're a technical writer, learning how to code is likely single most valuable thing you can do. Learning how to code will allow you to
- Expand the topics you write about - writing programming tutorials or other content aimed at developers is among the most in-demand kind of writing right now
- Eliminate repetitive work - if you've ever had to change the same thing across many files, or check through dozens of web pages, you'll know how tedious it can be. By learning to code, you can build your own scripts and bots to help you with anything repetitive.
- Communicate better with developers - even if you don't need to code directly, being able to understand what code samples do will let you understand the surrounding content better, and you'll find it easier to talk to developers about what tools are and how they work.
We believe that Python is the best language to learn - it allows for easy scripting and it is very general-purpose. There is a saying that Python is the second-best langauge for any task. What the 'best' language is, depends on the task, but Python is usually the second-best. It has strong sub-communities in the software engineering, DevOps, machine learning, data analysis, web development, game development and information security fields. It's also one of the easiest languages to get started with as its syntax reads a lot like English.
There is no shortage of bootcamps, courses, books, and other ways to learn Python. We have chosen and partially developed learnpythontherightway.com as our syllabus of choice because it focuses on the fundamentals (computer science, and teaching you how to think about programming) while remaining very hands-on and practical. One of the most common blocks for new programmers is setting Python up - it is hard to install and there are many layers of virtualisation and package management to understand. Therefore, we are adapting the popular book to work entirely online using Replit - no set up required.
Ritza's Learn to Code by Coding is a four week intensive fully remote course, run mainly on Slack with weekly meetings on Zoom. It is primarily for people who have at least some experience with technical writing and focuses on teaching people how to code.
You will join a cohort of four people. One other person will be doing exactly the same course as you, and the other two will be coders doing our "Learning to Write for Coders" course. While all of you will receive guidance and feedback from our professional technical publishing team throughout the course, you will also help and support each other, reviewing each other's work and learning from that alongside your own.
You will share daily updates of your progress on our Slack channel and get help (usually within minutes) if you get stuck with any of the materials or exercises. You will get personalised feedback on your code from professional software engineers.
Start the book and see how far you get. We are not sure how long it will take, but we are hoping that you can cover at least one chapter per day.
This syllabus will become more structured after the first run.
Exercise: Write a tutorial on something you found confusing.
Collaborative writing is hard - people work on different versions and email final_version_5_(2)_final(4).docx files back and forth. Git is very complicated and has a steep learning curve, but we think that learning the git model is hugely valuable for any writer. Learn to think of versions as a series of diffs instead of as copies of a master version, and never manually reconcile changes again.
You will start using git for your writing, including doing pull requests, branches, and forks, while continuing to work through Python.
Exercise: Write a tutorial on something you found confusing.
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