If you want to learn programming but you’re not interested in a formal education – or you just don’t have the money for one – you can learn a lot through forums that offer programming help. There are plenty of them available online, and they offer a lot of resources for people who are sincere about learning how to program things properly. If you want to learn the basics or you have a more in-depth question that you can’t seem to find the answer to, forums can be a good way to find what you’re looking for. Just make sure you locate a good one and ask your question as clearly as possible, so you have the highest chance of getting a good answer.
Some forums are more active than others, and it’s important to pick one where there’s a lot going on. If you don’t, your question could languish for days, or never even get answered, because no one is checking the forums to see what’s going on. If there’s a forum where people are really talking to one another, you’ll have a higher chance of asking questions that will get answered quickly. After all, you wouldn’t have asked if you didn’t want an answer, so you obviously don’t want to wait forever to get that information. By choosing an active forum, you’ll also be more likely to get people who know what they’re talking about.
You really shouldn’t rely on forums to help you do everything when it comes to programming. You’ll need to learn some of it on your own, but forums are great places for things like interaction and clarification. They can also help if you think you’re doing something right and it’s not working – maybe someone else can spot the mistake and tell you what it is.