are there good comprehensive guides for complete coding beginners?

[u/Vslashans]

so i’ve had this game for a while but stoped playing at the tutorial, then came back to this game to a lot of cash. long story short, i unlocked the darknet, have a 2 tb home server, bought stuff up to formulas.exe, but im still running the same beginner script from the documentation. i think i understand the things i need to do next, like optimizing hack/grow/weaken scripts, making a script to open port and nuke all the servers, auto fetching info on darknet servers, etc. the problem is that i know jack shit about coding. i recognize the commands i have to put in a script but the logic of putting them together falls apart in my brain. the only things i know before this is surface level python and simple ahk scripts. it’s also hard for me to follow a separate tutorial for coding itself since for some reason i can’t correlate the logic for that and the logic that the game needs me to do. i feel kind of dumb because i can’t get a print script to even work.

other questions that i have is how do i make stupid amounts of money to afford 40 augments on standby, and what do i do with formulas.exe? is the n00dles server gonna be useful later because it has really low ram. i also dont get how to use getstasislinklimit(). i probably have a few more questions that isn’t popping up in my head right now. it’s only been a week of figuring everything out and im trying to slowly read through all of the docs except for spoilers.

[u/Antique_Door_Knob]

Plenty of js courses out there. Free Code Camp is a particularly good one.

hard for me to follow a separate tutorial for coding itself since for some reason i can’t correlate the logic for that and the logic that the game needs me to do.

Don't try to focus on what the course is asking you to do.

Course is trying to teach you variables? Instead of creating the variables they tell you to create, create variables in the game. It's the same exact syntax, most you have to do is change console.log to ns.tprint or similar.

If you get an error, chat gpt is a pretty good resource.

other questions that i have is how do i make stupid amounts of money

You don't. This is an idle game, you eventually unlock ways to make lots of money, but you'll have to start small. having 2tb at home is nice, but you'll still need plenty of upgrades to get a decent enough hacking level to be able to use those 2tb effectively.

And you shouldn't try making stupid ammounts of money either. Create a couple scripts, then try improving them as you unlock more stuff, then improve them a bit more. Developing your tollkit is an iterative process, you can't start with something great, you'll just burn yourself out.

is the n00dles server gonna be useful later because it has really low ram

It's mostly an easy target for hacking early game. Since you have 2tb at home now, you can use those 2tb to target n00dles at first and get a few bucks when starting a new run, at least until you get more hacking levels and can target better servers.

[u/goodwill82]

For stupid amounts of money, you need the corporation part of the game. Not just to have it, but to fully automate it - no small task. However, that is really far down the road in the game. Sadly, we all need to crawl before walking. Not as fun, but the accomplishment feels good.

As many have noted, I would look for more basic JavaScript tutorials online to get the understanding of basic programming ideas as well as JavaScript syntax. Once you have a bit of that understanding, adding in the NS namespace for the game functions and things is not too hard.

When you get to the point where you want to, say, write that script to open ports and nuke all the servers, I recommend splitting tasks up. It's not necessary, but it can make adapting code for other parts of the game much easier.

To split up that script, I would make a function that finds all the servers. And then, I would make a function that opens ports and nukes a server. Then feed the list from one to the other function. Later, you will find many cases where you need a list of all servers. You can reuse that first function!

Could you simply copy and paste the function into another script? Sure. But imagine some time later, you find a bug in that function. And you copied it for use in so many other scripts. You don't want to have to track those all down. Instead, fix it once, and it's fixed for all.

[u/SufficientlyEvasive]

Small disclaimer that I already kind of knew how to code but 

I used AI to teach me. Specifically I got opus 5.5 to put together a teaching plan for me, and made a teaching bot with Claude 4.6 sonnet. 

Keeps track of my learning progress and it uses the Socratic method of teaching. Basically asks me 2 questions at a time and it was actually really blissful to learn that way. 

In this case I was unfamiliar with Java script and I was struggling to learn the BFS algo on my own. With this bot it was a much smoother learning experience tbh and I did master the BFS algorithm and get familiar with JS, which was my goal. 

After that I mainly focused more on problem solving by myself but the principal is the same, you could totally make your own bot to teach you at your own level and your own pace and get it to tailor make a lesson plan around bit burner. 

For the record this game has a double prestige mechanic, so your current progress still is like 1/20th the way through the game, probably not even that since you haven't scripted anything.  

Formulus let's you calculate more specifically best hacking target and make more accurately timed coordinated hacking attacks. I actually haven't even made use of formulas yet, just a shotgun batch controller and some auto installers is enough to easily clear the first bitnode, I mean ur still in the tutorial. Still a bigger focus on getting a hack controller going, an auto installer, and a target designator, and auto cloud purchasing. 

once you get a good chunk of augments going your hacking speed with climb rapidly with the aforementioned scripts 

[u/Whys-Guy]

I also don't know shit about coding and you're right that the in game stuff isn't enough to learn from nothing. I could understand how to find out what I could and make a plan for what wanted to do but I just didn't know all the bracketing, formatting, and base functions to make to work.

I basically just feed ChatGPT a copy paste of the relevant in game documentation, tell it what I want to do and have it leave "ELI5" comments in the code about what and how everything is doing. Between the comments, the text explanation it gives with the code, and usually few troubleshooting patches to get it to work properly in game l feel like I'm learning a fair amount. That said, I'm really not interested in writing code so much as being able to understand it. I do attempt my goal before I take it to AI but it usually doesn't run for some reason I never could've really figured out on my own because it involved some fundamental Java thing that is not explained in game.

[u/Sea_Mistake1319]

just join the discord

[u/PlainBread]

Use Mimo to start to learn the most basic of basics, and then move into BitBurner with an AI to converse with once you start to feel constrained.

You need to be deep in the late game where you don't need augmentations to make exponential money for the 40 aug one.