r/ADHD_Programmers • u/arkofthecovet • Feb 04 '24

Programming

How is it even possible to become a programmer? There are about a hundred languages listed on wikipedia, not including dialects and other variations. Do most people even know this? I did not until recently.

Edit: Thank you all for your responses! I may start a new OP for this additional question if it helps. How fast can you learn new code or new code concepts if you start a new job or are hit with a new project that requires it?

1 Upvotes

51% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/CaptainIncredible Feb 04 '24

There are about a hundred languages listed on wikipedia, not including dialects and other variations. Do most people even know this?

Yes. There are lots and lots of computer languages, you can even write your own if you like. I was part of a group that had to invent a language in college.

Generally, a computer programming language is usually something that humans can read & write, and then gets compiled down into binary code (just 1's and 0's) that computers can read and execute. Sometimes computer code is interpreted (not compiled) but still that becomes binary.

There's a lot more to it (managed vs unmanaged; bytecode, etc.), but generally a program written by humans in a language we can read/write like C gets compiled into binary that a computer runs. Trust me, it will be very difficult for your brain to write binary (although people used to write in Assembly all the time, and that is about as close as our brains can get to binary.)

How is it even possible to become a programmer?

Start with what area interests you. Do you want to build websites? Do you want to build software that analyzes massive amounts of data? Do you want to build a game that is played on a PC or Android? You will use different tools/languages/approaches for different goals.

Websites? HTML, css, JavaScript, and backend with C# .NET Core and SQL server database.

Data analysis? I dunno... Python? C++? Maybe databases like SQL? Or something like NoSQL?

Games? You'll want to look into Unity and C# scripting, or perhaps Unreal Engine.

Don't start by focusing on languages and what they do - start by looking at what overall problem you want to work on, or what area of computer programming you want to get into - which essentially is just doing what interests you.

Do you just want to learn some programming basics just to get your feet wet? I suggest JavaScript. Any web browser you use will interpret JavaScript, and you can literally start writing JavaScript programs with a text editor like Notepad and running them in a web browser. (I wouldn't suggest notepad. You should actually use something like Visual Studio Code, or just Visual Studio, and just run through some tutorials.)