100%, I learnt programming from the age of 14, just starting reading with books, demo-ing out the code, and then building virtually any program/site I wanted to, even if it was just for fun.
Now I'm actually a professional developer with 9 years experience.
I think the Internet is the best tool for free knowledge, and has fundamentally changed the requirement for many careers.
For sure it was harder before when you are starting.
There are forums and other websites that you can now rely and depend to what they are teaching to know more about programming.
Oh I completely agree. Like I started programming when it was okay (not bad, not great). You still had to rely on docs, and books for a lot of the knowledge.
Now-a-days there are so many different classes/services online, the learning curve has significantly shot way down.
If you do talk about programming yes the internet really is a good platform to learn. But on the other fields especially history or medicines there are alot of lies.
Tho when it comes to programming since that is a trial and error we can really play with the codes. Plus good thing is that there are good forums that talks about it like stockoverflow.
Yeah exactly. If you're a doctor, please go to a univesity/college & learn from trusted professionals. But at the end of the day, the risk in messing something up at a junior level in programming is very minimal.
My only concern about online programming courses is when people come out of them thinking they know a lot, and they don't know their limitations, which is huge. They begin to apply for contracts which require massive security considerations. They end up being way over their head at first (and I'm sure the same applies to other situations), and then they can actually produce harm to a corporation.
Trial/error all the way, just not in something mission critical as that.