Across this vast Fediverse, I have encountered a trend of people answering questions with esoteric programming language speaking in tongues that I don’t understand, including under my own posts. I am a Boomer when it comes to coding and I am only 27. I don’t even know where I would start to learn it because programming is so diverse. I want to feel like I know what’s going on but I don’t. Coding is the future and the future is now and I am lagging severely behind. I guess I’m asking where a bumbling novice like me can learn more about where to start when it comes to programming.
It’s basically a cleaner, more concise version of java. It’s a good choice to study if you want to learn something very different from JS but with some familiar syntax. These days you can also run C# anywhere, so it’s very useful for app development.
If you learn C# you’ll be able to learn java very quickly as well.
It’s a genuinely nice language with tons of syntactic sugar. It’s fast, flexible and runs everywhere. Honestly my favorite language.
Other nice things about it is you can write object oriented code as well as functional style with it, so it even handles the style of code you prefer which is a lot harder to do with other languages. Finally it’s open source but also has deep pockets behind it so the language is constantly being pushed forward.
I absolutely loved learning C# a few years ago. I haven’t touched programming since my last C# class and I’m probably going to relearn it later this week.
I’d go with Kotlin. It’s a really nice language, easy to learn if you already know JS (or even better, TS), and with KMM and Compose Multiplatform you can write apps which run natively on smartphones, browsers and PC/Mac.
C# is my primary language, so I’d certainly recommend it.
It can be a little daunting to get into because it is a large ecosystem of tools, so you might want to watch some videos and keep things simple for a while.
For work I mostly use it for APIs for web sites, that might be a good place to start if you’re familiar with JS/TS front-end work.
From there you might want to try Razor or Blazor for handling web UI work in C#. I’m not very experienced with that aspect of it, but it’s mostly been a positive experience (TBH I kind of prefer React, but I’d need to spend more time on the Razor/Blazor side to have a strong opinion).
The desktop development side in C# is kind of a mess at the moment. Maybe stick with web until you’re feeling pretty comfortable with the language.
Yes, it’s nice and worth learning, especially if you try at both highly abstracted code and performance sensitive projects. Don’t get stuck thinking in c# though. Its brand of strict oop seems to be getting less popular these days.
I always prescribe learning Python over basically any other language (unless you’re gonna start doing some real low-level computating). It’s a much more relevant and popular language. C# isn’t irrelevant, you’ll just see Python used way more often. Python will also compliment JS much more.
The first language I learned is C# and it sparked that interest that got me the job I’m in now!
I see other people recommending Python for beginners because of the simpler syntax (the way you write the code) but I’d still recommend C# because although the learning curve is a little steeper you’ll find it MUCH easier to learn pretty much any other language you choose. And even if you don’t choose to learn another language, you’ll still know a good (and fast) general-purpose language!
This. I love me some python, but it’s so unstructured (and by that I mean more how the structure is based off spacing), I actually think it makes it harder to learn vs. easier.
“Bracket” languages let the learner get a feel for when a piece of logic ends, which I think is important to learn at first. Also, C type languages, ESPECIALLY C#) are everywhere, depending on the field you end up specializing in you probably have a 90+% chance of needing to know one of these languages.
Seriously, there is nothing wrong with python, but I think the easiness of it actually works against learning to code (imho)
As a fellow bumbling novice, I hard a hard time figuring out where to start until one of my colleagues recommended C++. That is the way! I feel like C# helped train my brain to “think” in code… if that makes sense. The patterns and mechanisms involved in C# carry over to so many other languages. There’s my two cents for ya. Best of luck in your coding adventures!
Meant to say C#, said C++ instead… THEN kept messing it up while trying to fix it… So I ended up just deleting it. Edibles and lemmy is a tough combo. But I’m glad everyone else in the thread is calling out the good stuff.
I’m not sure I fully agree with that approach for most people since C++ resources and tools seem to not be the user friendliest but then again if it worked for you that is amazing.
I will tell you there is no need to be worried about coding. You don’t have to be worried about not knowing how to code. The coding part of coding is the simplest and the easiest part, the much much more important part is the thinking part, basically what you want to achieve and how you should go about it.
A lot of so called professional “coders” don’t know what it is that they are doing. A few days ago i looked at my sister’s very impressive code. That was truly a hard day, the ways in which I controlled myself by not beating the shit out of her for being a piece of garbage who is incapable of thinking. She would not understand even when explained in simple words why her code was incredibly shit and what to do to fix it, finally she didn’t fix it and left ruining more than just my day, she sent me into a trance worrying about the future of mankind as a whole, which I have still not been able to come out of.
Also as far as coding is concerned I would suggest you get started with python. It is easy and simple. Learn the basics in python, for majority of the things you will have achieved your desire.
I suggest that you use the book automate the boring stuff as a starting point, it will not only help you with your desire for coding, but may also come out to help you in your day-to-day things as well. You can easily find the pdf for free.
You don’t understand, if she wasn’t my sibling, it may as well have resulted in a fight.
This code was for a company, not a I’m learning and am just a beginner kind of thing. Let me share a few details about the code:
The program involved reading a csv file and doing some operations from the data it provided. It was a python program in a jupyter notebook (this is very relevant).
She had to create an array of the column names of the table. Her “solution” was to first print the table, then copy paste the column names into an array. When I told her to fix i pointing out the incredibly basic reasons for why not to do that, she refused. Also the table had like 10-15 columns.
She was using pandas dataframes, even having a variable called df in her code, also using the functions it provided. Now it will come as a surprise to you, as it came to me she doesn’t know what a dataframe is.
The reason she showed me her code was because she was getting an error which she didn’t know how to solve. The issue was that the array of column names she created and the column names in the table didn’t match. This was because when she printed the table the column names were missing _ which were present in the CSV file. One of the reasons for not not doing the first point. When told of the issue she added the _ manually. She will die on that hill.
So in jupyter notebooks you have cells in which you add a small slice of code and you run the cell. This is really amazing. Small issue though if you close the notebook and open it again you need to rerun the cells in the correct sequence again, barely an inconvenience . To overcome this great issue, my sister just didn’t do something stupid like having all her code in one cell, she was one step ahead, she had all the things she needed per cell copy-pasted. That God forsaken array of column names? You guessed it there were atleast 10 of them.
Now if she was just starting out, these could probably be forgiven, but she has been “coding” for atleast a few years now. Also she refuses to learn her mistakes.
Another interesting thing I noticed was, if she didn’t know something she would not search Google but rather YouTube. I originally thought she pasted some of the code from stackoverflow which has error, but no she looked at a YouTube video copied the code by hand and that code still resulted in an error because char and int are different, she doesn’t understand why it works in the video (same type), and why it doesn’t work for her.I am clearly still in a shock about the whole situation and to think someone would hire her only if it is for an internship still, I pray for the world.
Good news for you, I’m 33 years old and I canxt code yet. I just finisged a book about shell scripting (in Linux) so I can understands the scripts I see in github and made some simple ones to automate some of my needs. Now I want to up it up a bit with python and I’m starting a new book with Havard cx50 course.
You are never too old to learn. My regret is that i did not start sooner, like when I was your age.
If it helps, I knew someone who went back to school at 60 for their master’s and got their graduate degree at 64. That’s never too old to learn territory!
Honestly , why do you want to code? Simple question not offensive or sarcastic. I code because I’m in the security industry and a big geek. You are never to old to code , if you have the discipline to sit down and read and then practice over and over again then you will be fine to learn. its fun to code and learn new things. It also keeps your brain in better shape. I can help you find resources to get you started if you want. Everyone and I mean everyone starts in the beginning.
Think of something simple you want to make, pick a language, and start reading/watching tutorials and doing smaller coding exercises until you feel like you can start making it. This is the easiest period in human history to learn new languages, easily and for free.
Extended color basic on the COCO was amazing, and so when I moved to a Commodore 64 I was like “What the hell is this? Where’s all the graphics commands?”
Has anyone mentioned the free Harvard CS50 course? Start there and learn the very basics of computer science and programming. By the time you finish you’ll have a solid idea of where to go next.
X2! David Malan is an excellent teacher, OP! I hate academia and prefer learning through YouTube, but CS50 is an EXCELLENT way to get started with learning about computers and programming!
What are your hobbies? Most people struggle to learn programming until they find a project that they are interested in.
You mentioned an interest in music.
Perhaps you could try Sonic Pi, which is a live coding environment where you can create music from code.
It comes with a built-in tutorial, and a bunch of pre-written example code-music.
It’s built with the ruby language.
So I recommend Python if you just want general coding, dual booting Ubuntu or some other beginner friendly linux if that’s more interesting to you, or starting with html if website design sounds more fun.
Alternatively you could try R, it’s weird but I like it.
That’s a lazy answer for being wrong. Seems like you knew the correct word all along, but decided to use an ageist pejorative instead, and now you’re upset for being called out on it.
Wow it must be incredibly irritating being so pedantic. At least for everyone you interact with. But you’d think someone so hyper fixated on accurate language would know what a metaphor is.
Growing up post-internet shortens the generational memory, thoughts are limited to 160 cognition units. Everything relevant to modern life has been SEOed to the foreground, actual history can be safely ignored.
My biggest problem is figuring out what I want to do with any coding skills. I have none, by the way, and I don’t even know where to start.
Some of the usual responses when I state this:
“Automate your work” - I work in Salesforce. Have you seen Salesforce? I’m not a multi faceted systems administrator constantly updating DNS records or working in Active Directory.
“Write a cool app” - What cool app? What is “cool”?
“Open dev tools and look around” - Why? Specifically, why?
Also, learning programming is BORING. Most of the courses I’ve tried are so so stale and they aaallll end up explaining concepts in the same way.
“This is a fleeble and it holds the sping, the sping tells the plus plus that it must do what the herbug says”.
When I was learning from the courses or videos, it was boring too. I prefer just reading docs and “fucking around” with the technology I’m interested in than listening to Indian guy on YouTube. Each person has their own preferences, I’m just telling ya what worked for me. Don’t give up, instead try a different approach.
Also, there is no shame in admitting that programming just isn’t for you.
Speaking of cool projects; build a lemmy app. It can be console app for simplicity.
My biggest problem is figuring out what I want to do with any coding skills.
Honestly, why learn programming then?
I’m asking this as a programmer myself. I’m not trying to discourage you from learning it by any means, if that’s what you want to do. I’m just asking because it doesn’t sound as if you actually want to do it.
You’ve already tried learning it, and it’s a slog (whereas for me, I was immediately fascinated by it when I was introduced to it as a teenager, even though I was horrible at it). You don’t have any burning desires to create apps (whereas for me, there are so many ideas I want to explore, so many things I want to create that don’t exist yet, but alas I don’t have enough time or energy to work on it all). You don’t even have the desire to do it for purely career-related purposes, which is what I’d imagine drives most of the rest of people learning programming without enjoying it at all.
So why bother with learning something you neither enjoy nor have strong motivations to do?
Write a stupid little app if you have no cool ideas! The journey is the goal here. like, write a fart button app, make a clone of flappy bird, or whatever
My biggest problem is figuring out what I want to do with any coding skills
Maybe some dumb little games? If you aren’t interested in 3D gaming you can do 2D platformers, top-down Rogue-likes, or Zork-style interactive fiction (text) games (from scratch instead of with a Z-Machine).
As a self-taught developer, when I was learning I found it a lot more useful to just go code stuff, and then when I found something that seemed hard or ugly, I could go look for solutions to that kind of problem, which was much more interesting than just reading about various techniques. (Well, I was learning well before normal people had internet, so mostly I invented some shit to fix my own problem, but it got easier/faster after the internet became available).
I’m somewhat of a programmer, but there’s ideas everywhere in life. My bank came out with an API so I built an app that pulls it all down, stores it in a database, and makes some pretty graphs. Had no experience in fullstack or backend development before (I’m a sysadmin/cloud engineer), so it took me a really long time and I was following a course but adapting it to my project for a lot of it.
The other day I picked up an old game (Mu online) that is soooo grindy it even gives you an in-game bot to play for you, but if you die you just respawn in a safe zone. So I’ve started writing a script that reads the screen (character position is shown in x, y coordinates on screen), and those coordinates are within a given area (the safe zone) it will alert me. Again, had no experience with any of the window controls or image to text conversion (tesseract), but got chatgpt to help me a bit. Will it save me time? Maybe a little. Will I stop playing this game in a month? More than likely. Did I learn something? Absolutely.
I’m self taught but working in tech there’s obviously more work related use cases to actually start learning, but there’s every-day stuff you can do too.
Damn, a bank with an accessible API? I would be so happy if mine did this, they don’t even have a way to export transactions into a sane format like CSV…
I learned more by just taking the Doom source code and messing with it than I did from reading books. The main thing every language shares is the logic. Once you figure out how to translate your problem and solution into logical terms, using any language is rather easy; only the function names and syntax changes.
I’ve never written anything in Python, for example, but I am pretty confident that if I spent a day or so reading up on the syntax and functions and looking at some example snippets, I could port anything I’ve written in C, Java or Basic to Python.
I agree that books are dry as fuck and hard to keep up with as they tend to make a person fall asleep. But so much more learning can be done by examining others’ code that does the things you’re trying to do.
I did laugh at the Salesforce quip. I have seen it. It’s a fucking mess lol
Then it’s not for you. No shame in that. I don’t understand the notion that everyone is supposed to be a coder now.
If anything, the low-level coding part is something AI models may well make obsolete relatively soon. Unlike any craftsmanship - why not learn masonry or carpentry instead?
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I got you fam
https://www.codecademy.com/catalog/language/c-sharp?g_network=g&g_productchannel=&g_adid=665296763695&g_locinterest=&g_keyword=learn c sharp&g_acctid=243-039-7011&g_adtype=&g_keywordid=kwd-300944389858&g_ifcreative=&g_campaign=account&g_locphysical=9029574&g_adgroupid=150647307573&g_productid=&g_source={sourceid}&g_merchantid=&g_placement=&g_partition=&g_campaignid=20322806793&g_ifproduct=&utm_id=t_kwd-300944389858:ag_150647307573:cp_20322806793:n_g:d_m&utm_source=google&utm_medium=paid-search&utm_term=learn c sharp&utm_campaign=US_Language:_Basic_-_Exact&utm_content=665296763695&g_adtype=search&g_acctid=243-039-7011&gclid=Cj0KCQjwk96lBhDHARIsAEKO4xZrfMu04R0BNa6k7upg-cbbviaCq5VLS6P1VTQwyHIiMj6tPE0ecYAaAg7cEALw_wcB
Free course, C# is a genuine pleasure to work in/learn. Runs in all OS environments, and is probably the most modern “general” language
Only way to learn is to start learning
Don’t mind me, just saving this comment too.
Lemmy allows you to save a comment without commenting btw. Just click on the three dot menu and then click the star.
Oh, I know. I was just saying that to tell them that their post helped another person.
Oh my bad then, ignore me hahaha.
We could never ignore you bro!
Do you know how to do this on Memmy?
Also on Memmy and don’t see an option for this yet. Would be a great addition
Is C# really that nice to work in? I’m looking to expand my horizons past JS now that I feel fairly comfortable with one language.
It’s basically a cleaner, more concise version of java. It’s a good choice to study if you want to learn something very different from JS but with some familiar syntax. These days you can also run C# anywhere, so it’s very useful for app development.
If you learn C# you’ll be able to learn java very quickly as well.
It’s a genuinely nice language with tons of syntactic sugar. It’s fast, flexible and runs everywhere. Honestly my favorite language.
Other nice things about it is you can write object oriented code as well as functional style with it, so it even handles the style of code you prefer which is a lot harder to do with other languages. Finally it’s open source but also has deep pockets behind it so the language is constantly being pushed forward.
I absolutely loved learning C# a few years ago. I haven’t touched programming since my last C# class and I’m probably going to relearn it later this week.
I’d go with Kotlin. It’s a really nice language, easy to learn if you already know JS (or even better, TS), and with KMM and Compose Multiplatform you can write apps which run natively on smartphones, browsers and PC/Mac.
C# is my primary language, so I’d certainly recommend it. It can be a little daunting to get into because it is a large ecosystem of tools, so you might want to watch some videos and keep things simple for a while.
For work I mostly use it for APIs for web sites, that might be a good place to start if you’re familiar with JS/TS front-end work. From there you might want to try Razor or Blazor for handling web UI work in C#. I’m not very experienced with that aspect of it, but it’s mostly been a positive experience (TBH I kind of prefer React, but I’d need to spend more time on the Razor/Blazor side to have a strong opinion).
The desktop development side in C# is kind of a mess at the moment. Maybe stick with web until you’re feeling pretty comfortable with the language.
Yes, it’s nice and worth learning, especially if you try at both highly abstracted code and performance sensitive projects. Don’t get stuck thinking in c# though. Its brand of strict oop seems to be getting less popular these days.
You can write fully functional code in C#! I pretty much made the switch over and it works great
I always prescribe learning Python over basically any other language (unless you’re gonna start doing some real low-level computating). It’s a much more relevant and popular language. C# isn’t irrelevant, you’ll just see Python used way more often. Python will also compliment JS much more.
The first language I learned is C# and it sparked that interest that got me the job I’m in now!
I see other people recommending Python for beginners because of the simpler syntax (the way you write the code) but I’d still recommend C# because although the learning curve is a little steeper you’ll find it MUCH easier to learn pretty much any other language you choose. And even if you don’t choose to learn another language, you’ll still know a good (and fast) general-purpose language!
This. I love me some python, but it’s so unstructured (and by that I mean more how the structure is based off spacing), I actually think it makes it harder to learn vs. easier.
“Bracket” languages let the learner get a feel for when a piece of logic ends, which I think is important to learn at first. Also, C type languages, ESPECIALLY C#) are everywhere, depending on the field you end up specializing in you probably have a 90+% chance of needing to know one of these languages.
Seriously, there is nothing wrong with python, but I think the easiness of it actually works against learning to code (imho)
Smh, you’re not even dumping them into Linux from scratch to learn C++ yet!
Hehe baby steps!
Fuck it, let’s go deeper: How to create an OS from scratch {using assembly language}
Okay, C# is a music note which links with my fondness of music theory. Kewl.
As a fellow bumbling novice, I hard a hard time figuring out where to start until one of my colleagues recommended C++. That is the way! I feel like C# helped train my brain to “think” in code… if that makes sense. The patterns and mechanisms involved in C# carry over to so many other languages. There’s my two cents for ya. Best of luck in your coding adventures!
You do know that C++ and C# are two different languages, right?
Meant to say C#, said C++ instead… THEN kept messing it up while trying to fix it… So I ended up just deleting it. Edibles and lemmy is a tough combo. But I’m glad everyone else in the thread is calling out the good stuff.
I had an edible once…
Oh yeah, apologies for the above comment. C# is definitely a good option, especially if you use windows and love messing around with the OS
I’m not sure I fully agree with that approach for most people since C++ resources and tools seem to not be the user friendliest but then again if it worked for you that is amazing.
I will tell you there is no need to be worried about coding. You don’t have to be worried about not knowing how to code. The coding part of coding is the simplest and the easiest part, the much much more important part is the thinking part, basically what you want to achieve and how you should go about it.
A lot of so called professional “coders” don’t know what it is that they are doing. A few days ago i looked at my sister’s very impressive code. That was truly a hard day, the ways in which I controlled myself by not beating the shit out of her for being a piece of garbage who is incapable of thinking. She would not understand even when explained in simple words why her code was incredibly shit and what to do to fix it, finally she didn’t fix it and left ruining more than just my day, she sent me into a trance worrying about the future of mankind as a whole, which I have still not been able to come out of.
Also as far as coding is concerned I would suggest you get started with python. It is easy and simple. Learn the basics in python, for majority of the things you will have achieved your desire.
I suggest that you use the book
automate the boring stuffas a starting point, it will not only help you with your desire for coding, but may also come out to help you in your day-to-day things as well. You can easily find the pdf for free.https://automatetheboringstuff.com/
You sound like a lovely sibling…
You don’t understand, if she wasn’t my sibling, it may as well have resulted in a fight.
This code was for a company, not a I’m learning and am just a beginner kind of thing. Let me share a few details about the code:
The program involved reading a csv file and doing some operations from the data it provided. It was a python program in a jupyter notebook (this is very relevant).
dfin her code, also using the functions it provided. Now it will come as a surprise to you, as it came to me she doesn’t know what a dataframe is._which were present in the CSV file. One of the reasons for not not doing the first point. When told of the issue she added the_manually. She will die on that hill.Now if she was just starting out, these could probably be forgiven, but she has been “coding” for atleast a few years now. Also she refuses to learn her mistakes.
Another interesting thing I noticed was, if she didn’t know something she would not search Google but rather YouTube. I originally thought she pasted some of the code from stackoverflow which has error, but no she looked at a YouTube video copied the code by hand and that code still resulted in an error because
charandintare different, she doesn’t understand why it works in the video (same type), and why it doesn’t work for her.I am clearly still in a shock about the whole situation and to think someone would hire her only if it is for an internship still, I pray for the world.Seriously, what the fuck?
Good news for you, I’m 33 years old and I canxt code yet. I just finisged a book about shell scripting (in Linux) so I can understands the scripts I see in github and made some simple ones to automate some of my needs. Now I want to up it up a bit with python and I’m starting a new book with Havard cx50 course. You are never too old to learn. My regret is that i did not start sooner, like when I was your age.
Good luck.
To you as well.
Holy shit, is 33 really “never to old to learn” territory?
If it helps, I knew someone who went back to school at 60 for their master’s and got their graduate degree at 64. That’s never too old to learn territory!
Honestly , why do you want to code? Simple question not offensive or sarcastic. I code because I’m in the security industry and a big geek. You are never to old to code , if you have the discipline to sit down and read and then practice over and over again then you will be fine to learn. its fun to code and learn new things. It also keeps your brain in better shape. I can help you find resources to get you started if you want. Everyone and I mean everyone starts in the beginning.
Think of something simple you want to make, pick a language, and start reading/watching tutorials and doing smaller coding exercises until you feel like you can start making it. This is the easiest period in human history to learn new languages, easily and for free.
Then the grizzled old curmudgeon bellied up to the bar and said “ONE WORD. BASIC.”
And everyone else in the room pointed and laughed. But I still like it. shut up.
I’m part of the cohort of programmers that learned to code in pre-dotnet VB. VB6 (my precious) was the most popular programming language for years.
deleted by creator
Extended color basic on the COCO was amazing, and so when I moved to a Commodore 64 I was like “What the hell is this? Where’s all the graphics commands?”
cumdungeon
Has anyone mentioned the free Harvard CS50 course? Start there and learn the very basics of computer science and programming. By the time you finish you’ll have a solid idea of where to go next.
X2! David Malan is an excellent teacher, OP! I hate academia and prefer learning through YouTube, but CS50 is an EXCELLENT way to get started with learning about computers and programming!
What are your hobbies? Most people struggle to learn programming until they find a project that they are interested in. You mentioned an interest in music. Perhaps you could try Sonic Pi, which is a live coding environment where you can create music from code. It comes with a built-in tutorial, and a bunch of pre-written example code-music. It’s built with the ruby language.
So I recommend Python if you just want general coding, dual booting Ubuntu or some other beginner friendly linux if that’s more interesting to you, or starting with html if website design sounds more fun.
Alternatively you could try R, it’s weird but I like it.
You should start here directly in the future:
You may not have seen this before because it is so new.
Actually, if you are a Boomer this should be your starting point.
So you were born in 1996, but the part of your brain that handles coding was born in 1966? How is that possible? Do you even know what a boomer is?
Boomer is slowly evolving into Luddite in it’s usage if you were not aware.
That’s a lazy answer for being wrong. Seems like you knew the correct word all along, but decided to use an ageist pejorative instead, and now you’re upset for being called out on it.
Wow it must be incredibly irritating being so pedantic. At least for everyone you interact with. But you’d think someone so hyper fixated on accurate language would know what a metaphor is.
Ok Boomer 😎
This is a good place to start if you’re already using the computer for several tasks.
https://automatetheboringstuff.com
Do you realize that boomers are the ones who literally made the Internet?
No one is a boomer when it comes to coding.
Now all they do is fart and complain about the TV being too loud.
Hey, language evolves with time, Boomer is becoming synonymous with Luddite.
Hey some of them were older Gen Z
Growing up post-internet shortens the generational memory, thoughts are limited to 160 cognition units. Everything relevant to modern life has been SEOed to the foreground, actual history can be safely ignored.
Now I’m a boomer in my mid-30s.
Not the ones that I work with.
My biggest problem is figuring out what I want to do with any coding skills. I have none, by the way, and I don’t even know where to start.
Some of the usual responses when I state this:
“Automate your work” - I work in Salesforce. Have you seen Salesforce? I’m not a multi faceted systems administrator constantly updating DNS records or working in Active Directory.
“Write a cool app” - What cool app? What is “cool”?
“Open dev tools and look around” - Why? Specifically, why?
Also, learning programming is BORING. Most of the courses I’ve tried are so so stale and they aaallll end up explaining concepts in the same way.
“This is a fleeble and it holds the sping, the sping tells the plus plus that it must do what the herbug says”.
k.
So, don’t learn to code? If you don’t have any reason to and can’t find any motivation, maybe it’s just not for you.
When I was learning from the courses or videos, it was boring too. I prefer just reading docs and “fucking around” with the technology I’m interested in than listening to Indian guy on YouTube. Each person has their own preferences, I’m just telling ya what worked for me. Don’t give up, instead try a different approach.
Also, there is no shame in admitting that programming just isn’t for you.
Speaking of cool projects; build a lemmy app. It can be console app for simplicity.
Not a bad shout. I see wefwef is a webapp. That could be worth exploring.
Thanks.
Honestly, why learn programming then?
I’m asking this as a programmer myself. I’m not trying to discourage you from learning it by any means, if that’s what you want to do. I’m just asking because it doesn’t sound as if you actually want to do it.
You’ve already tried learning it, and it’s a slog (whereas for me, I was immediately fascinated by it when I was introduced to it as a teenager, even though I was horrible at it). You don’t have any burning desires to create apps (whereas for me, there are so many ideas I want to explore, so many things I want to create that don’t exist yet, but alas I don’t have enough time or energy to work on it all). You don’t even have the desire to do it for purely career-related purposes, which is what I’d imagine drives most of the rest of people learning programming without enjoying it at all.
So why bother with learning something you neither enjoy nor have strong motivations to do?
Write a stupid little app if you have no cool ideas! The journey is the goal here. like, write a fart button app, make a clone of flappy bird, or whatever
Maybe some dumb little games? If you aren’t interested in 3D gaming you can do 2D platformers, top-down Rogue-likes, or Zork-style interactive fiction (text) games (from scratch instead of with a Z-Machine).
As a self-taught developer, when I was learning I found it a lot more useful to just go code stuff, and then when I found something that seemed hard or ugly, I could go look for solutions to that kind of problem, which was much more interesting than just reading about various techniques. (Well, I was learning well before normal people had internet, so mostly I invented some shit to fix my own problem, but it got easier/faster after the internet became available).
I’m somewhat of a programmer, but there’s ideas everywhere in life. My bank came out with an API so I built an app that pulls it all down, stores it in a database, and makes some pretty graphs. Had no experience in fullstack or backend development before (I’m a sysadmin/cloud engineer), so it took me a really long time and I was following a course but adapting it to my project for a lot of it.
The other day I picked up an old game (Mu online) that is soooo grindy it even gives you an in-game bot to play for you, but if you die you just respawn in a safe zone. So I’ve started writing a script that reads the screen (character position is shown in x, y coordinates on screen), and those coordinates are within a given area (the safe zone) it will alert me. Again, had no experience with any of the window controls or image to text conversion (tesseract), but got chatgpt to help me a bit. Will it save me time? Maybe a little. Will I stop playing this game in a month? More than likely. Did I learn something? Absolutely.
I’m self taught but working in tech there’s obviously more work related use cases to actually start learning, but there’s every-day stuff you can do too.
Damn, a bank with an accessible API? I would be so happy if mine did this, they don’t even have a way to export transactions into a sane format like CSV…
I learned more by just taking the Doom source code and messing with it than I did from reading books. The main thing every language shares is the logic. Once you figure out how to translate your problem and solution into logical terms, using any language is rather easy; only the function names and syntax changes.
I’ve never written anything in Python, for example, but I am pretty confident that if I spent a day or so reading up on the syntax and functions and looking at some example snippets, I could port anything I’ve written in C, Java or Basic to Python.
I agree that books are dry as fuck and hard to keep up with as they tend to make a person fall asleep. But so much more learning can be done by examining others’ code that does the things you’re trying to do.
I did laugh at the Salesforce quip. I have seen it. It’s a fucking mess lol
Then it’s not for you. No shame in that. I don’t understand the notion that everyone is supposed to be a coder now.
If anything, the low-level coding part is something AI models may well make obsolete relatively soon. Unlike any craftsmanship - why not learn masonry or carpentry instead?
I’m not giving up a 20+ year career in IT just because I haven’t yet found a way to learn how to code.
There’s more than one way to teach a subject and it would be nice to have even a basic understanding of the mess I am supposed to be supporting,
Why do you want to learn how to code?
Is it purely to get a better understanding of how salesforce works “under the hood”?
(I’m looking for context because I don’t know anything about salesforce but I do know how to code)
Oh god no, not Salesforce. No no no.
All of our other products.
Gotcha, maybe you don’t necessarily have to be a coder to understand those products better.
Simply being curious and having conversations with devs will probably get you far.