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.
I got you fam
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.
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
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!
Okay, C# is a music note which links with my fondness of music theory. Kewl.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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)
What are these answers…
Wrong place to ask, but whatever.
It depends on what you want to build. If you’re not sure, start with Python. It’s likely easiest to pick up and get running. There’s a book called “Automate the Boring Stuff.” I think there’s an online version. (Edit: link - https://automatetheboringstuff.com/)
If you don’t want to set up Python (or any language, really) on your computer, there’s a tool called a REPL that you can find online. So you can just search “Python online REPL,” and you’ll get a functional online environment to code. Now, you won’t be able to do stuff interacting with your local computer this way, like reading files, but it’s good for learning the basics of the language.
In terms of software for writing code in on your local computer, Visual Studio Code (NOT to be confused with Visual Studio) is a free, lightweight code editor. It supports every language via plugins.
If you do go the Python route, make sure to learn about virtual environments before you do ‘pip’ or ‘conda’ anything. Also, unless you’re doing data science things, stick to pip. (Maybe some personal bias there, but I hate anaconda.) If you’re starting from nothing, it’ll be awhile until you get there anyway, so don’t worry too much about it.
Most importantly, find a community that welcomes new learners. Learning to code is absolutely fucking brutal, so having supportive people available makes a world of difference. Bonus points if you can find an offline meetup in your local area.
Python is the way to go for any newbie imo. Js has too many weird pitfalls that don’t make sense when first starting out
No one has mentioned it from what I can see but I highly recommend the courses provided by https://www.mooc.fi/en/. It’s the university of Helsinki and it’s completely free. They offer both Java and Python courses. I believe they have an introduction to programming course that is done in Python.
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Now all they do is fart and complain about the TV being too loud.
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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.
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.
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.
I am a Boomer when it comes to coding
Hey, OP, I think it’s cool that you’d like to learn to code. I made my living as a coder for many years and it’s a good career path. But I would not say it’s an essential life skill and the vast majority of people of all ages get by fine without coding skills.
With that out of the way, I’m going to defend the honor of Boomers here. Boomers (and the Silent Gen before them) built the technology industry as we know it today. For example, here’s a list of popular programming languages and their inventors:
- Java: James Gosling (1955) - Boomer
- C: Dennis Ritchie (1941) - Almost a Boomer
- C++: Bjarne Stroustrup (1950) - Boomer
- C#: Anders Hejlsberg (1960) - Boomer
- Python: Guido van Rossum (1956) - Boomer
- PHP: Rasmus Lerdorf (1968) - X Gen
- Perl: Larry Wall (1954) - Boomer
- JavaScript: Brendan Eich (1961) - Boomer
- Ruby: Yukihiro Matsumoto (1965) - Cusp of Boomer/X Gen
- SQL: Raymond Boyce (1946) and Donald Chamberlin (1944) - Boomers
- Go: Robert Griesemer (1964), Rob Pike (1956) and Ken Thompson (1943) - 2 Boomers and an almost-Boomer
<Adjusts onion>. Thank you for your indulgence.
I didn’t think computers ran on anything but steam back then.
Mine was powered by hamster wheels. The damn wheels squealed all day long - drove me crazy. Not to mention the feed bill.
That’s odd. You would think that the government would treat its military technology better.
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This is a good place to start if you’re already using the computer for several tasks.
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!
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.
learning programming is BORING
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
Software engineering nowadays is really complex. There is no way you’re going to know what’s going on, nobody is.
It’s just the more experience you have, the easier it is to figure out what’s going on. If you want to learn coding, just start coding.
I will start from something no one mentioned - start with Linux. Windows has its own very “special” ways of compiling stuff, while Linux is very simple. If you start on Windows, you’ll probably use IDE which will set up everything for you (cause setting up thing in Windows is messed up), and it will still be a black magic for you how the code transforms into binary.
Many people recommend python, but I would start with C (not C++, C++ sucks). It will give you the understanding of basic concepts like memory management.
Then start using something like javascript, which will get you wide range of libraries, which you can use to build anything.
Then at the end learn how infrastructure works, how are services communicating with each other, how to put your server to the public, learn Docker, set up reverse proxy, run stuff in cloud.
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.
Honestly, I would start with learning JavaScript.
Anything in the browser runs on JavaScript, and it’s a very forgiving language to learn for beginners.
I’ve been coding for 40 years, it’s both my job and my hobby, and I still feel old and out of touch when reading or taking part in coding conversations outside of my sphere :)
This is not meant to be discouraging - even the smallest amount of coding you could learn will be immensely rewarding - more to say that coding is vast arena with a breadth of complexity that can often feel overwhelming. So don’t be put off when you teach yourself some JavaScript and then still feel adrift in a conversation about C#.
I don’t have any specifics to recommend, but I would say that you should start small. Don’t aim to write the next Flappy Bird as your first project, or the next Mastodon. Just concentrate on making a web page say “Hello world!” or changing the colour of some text. Back in the 80s, most kids got their first taste of programming by having a computer shop C64 print “Dave is rad!” on an infinite loop! :)
Good luck!
I’d actually start by playing around with the automation and customization functionality you already have. Learn to set email sorting filters, get some cool browser extensions and configure them, maybe even start by customizing your windows preferences or making some red stone stuff in Minecraft.
Computers are just tools. Programs are just stuff you tell a computer to do over and over again. All the fancy programming languages give you really good control over how you talk to a computer but I’d start with the computer equivalent of “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”
What language would that be?
I’m not talking about any particular language.
Modern programming languages are as complex as natural languages. They have sophisticated and flexible grammars. They have huge vocabularies. They’re rich enough that individual projects will have a particular “style”. Programming languages tend to emphasize the imperative and the interrogative over the indicative but they’re all there.
Most programming languages have a few common elements:
Some way to remember things
Some way to repeat sets of instructions
Some way to tell the user what it’s done
Some way to make decisions (ie if X then do Y)Programmers mix and match those and, depending on the skill of the people involved, end up with Shakespear, Bulwer-Lytton, or something in between.
The essence of programming is to arrange those elements into a configuration that does something useful for you. It’s going to be hard to know what kinds of useful things you can do if you’re completely fresh to the field.
Python and Javascript are great. The main reasons I wouldn’t recommend them for an absolute beginner is that it takes some time to set up and, even after that, there’s a bit of a curve before you can do something interesting.
If they go and change configuration settings in an app, they’re learning to manipulate variables.
If they click a “do this N times” they’ve learned to create a loop.
etc.They aren’t talking about a programming language, just the graphical tools in the programs you already have.
If you are interested in simple automation for your computer, learn python. If you are interested in simple automation in a browser, learn JavaScript.
I don’t know what needs to be automated though.
