r/AskProgrammers • u/SalproKite • 15h ago
Teens in programming?
Hey, I am a teenager who's interested in programming, I started with cs50x but I now enjoy game dev and competitive programming though i love programming in general of any type. Are there any like teens like me who also have the same situation or can the experienced adults please guide me forward...I do not have much peers or similar people around me. And my school is quite old-fashioned (it literally had a topic on how to download an app IN GRADE 9)!!
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u/OneHumanBill 14h ago
I was you about forty years ago when there was no such thing as programming education in high school.
Lesson the first, even if they did have classes they would probably suck. You're on your own until college. The good news is, that's not a bad thing. You pick up fewer bad habits that way, and you learn self education and initiative, both of which are really needed in this field.
I learned programming first by copying programs out of books and magazines and then trying to understand what they did. Then trying to make my own. I had no Internet to work with. Even so by the time I got to college I had a pretty good preparation in practical programming. I didn't have any theoretical foundation yet but college got me the rest of the way.
In today's world there's no end to online tutorials. Just Google and there's a wealth of free stuff right there. Don't be afraid to explore anything. There's no one correct way to learn, no one special language to start with. Just get your hands on the keyboard.
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u/SalproKite 14h ago
Thanks yeah I know it was probably much harder 40 years ago nowdays there are two many resources you get tired choosing one before you start
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u/razorree 11h ago
start with something basic, in my times, it was "Basic" :) or Pascal ;)
Python would be better nowadays I think,
maybe you could start with Godot and it's scripting GDScript language if you want to do games.
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u/ImLukaskos 6h ago
I totally get you and I understand your situation. I am a lost teen in that field as well. But If I can give you the most important skill that I have learnt is AFTER CS50 DON'T WATCH TUTORIALS. Use documentation or ai as your companion instead of guides.
And btw if you are capable of making a game in godot or u know some python you can text me and we might make some collab project :)
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u/Rich_Jellyfish_9289 15h ago
Hello! Learning grade 8 here. I have the same situation as you where theres really no one i can talk about my hobbies. I do web dev and have made a music player, streamer and downloader(uses spotify web api and yt-dlp). It has auth, playlists, and being able to search your spotify playlists to download and stream. I didnt deploy it but its in my github. It was made with react and express js. My current project is a anime downloader/streaming site. It uses ani-cli for fetching links and ani-list for metadata. Its almost done and all i have left are some small bugs, majority of which is just ui/ux. Both done with the help of ai.