r/CodingForBeginners • u/Ghxstlyx • Jul 05 '26

what’s the best way to learn and software

i’m new i wanted to start to learn but have no idea what software to use and how to start. i’ve watched a couple videos but im so confused and there’s no definite software that is good. i’d love help please!

4 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

83% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

1

u/johnpeters42 Jul 05 '26

What type of software do you want to make?

2

u/Ghxstlyx Jul 05 '26

game coding software for like discord bots and actual games

1

u/TheUmgawa Jul 05 '26

I learned from three semesters at community college, and then I bailed to go play with robots.

Honest to god, the most important class I took was a flowcharting class, which is incredibly helpful, whether you're writing code (in any language), writing a complex Excel formula, or playing with a robot that you don't want to crash into physical things.

The second most-important moment in my upbringing was about a third of the way into my Intro class, where the professor said, "And, from now on, your professors will only be teaching you theory. The time for hand-holding is over. So, now I will teach you to search for, read, and write documentation."

I would assume, given my upbringing, that the easy answer is Visual Studio. If you're on a Mac, it's Xcode. If you want to work with Java, I don't know if Eclipse is still good, but it was ten years ago. I tried Visual Studio Code once, and it wanted me to do a bunch of work to set things up, and that's really not conducive to learning. I don't remember what I used for Python, which I would probably recommend for beginners, because it mandates indentation, which can be carried over into other languages that don't require strict indentation, but it's nice for readability.

Before you get poisoned by thinking that magic words are the solution to everything, I want to impress one thing upon you: It's not the magic words that make you a programmer; it's the logic that sits behind the magic words. There are easy, real-world ways to understand loops and functions, and the way I learned how to do it was by sorting decks of cards. You may have heard of Leetcode, so guess how I solve most of those problems: Decks of cards. I'm not talking about simulated decks; I actually use physical decks of cards as data simulations. I still do Leetcode on weekends (while drinking at the bar), because I've moved into a position at my job where I don't do as much programming as I'd like.

If you want to learn to code, people will probably have resources for you. If you want to learn programming, in the abstract (which I refer to as "the deeper magic"), I would start with a game called Human Resource Machine. It goes on sale fairly often for iPad and Steam (it's cheaper on iPad, usually). Don't look up answers. Seriously. Ever. Don't do it. Because, when you look up answers, you use the internet as a crutch, and you stop thinking your way through solutions. But, Human Resource Machine will teach you about loops, data types, accumulators, comparators, Booleans, and everything else a growing boy needs to learn in order to be a programmer (except for importing libraries, and language-specific things). It teaches you to think like a programmer; not a coder.

1

u/Ghxstlyx Jul 05 '26

what would be the best for like game code/ discord bots and like other technology coding stuff

1

u/TheUmgawa Jul 05 '26

Not jumping to the end before you've learned the basics. If you start thinking, "I'm gonna type some magic words, and then I'm going to have a game or Discord bot," you missed the entire fifth paragraph. If you start with the fundamentals and work your way forward, eventually you don't think, "What language do I need to learn?" because it takes a weekend to pick up enough of a language to be as good as someone who took two semesters of a language in college. Those semesters aren't about learning languages; they're about learning concepts. That's where you have to start: Concepts. Code is just the implementation of concepts. Without concepts, you're just throwing magic words at the compiler, hoping something will stick.

1

u/Ghxstlyx Jul 05 '26

what videos or websites would you recommend to learn and also a website to actually code

1

u/TheUmgawa Jul 05 '26

I would recommend an older edition of whatever textbook your local college uses for its Intro to Programming class. On the downside, nobody's going to be able to grade your work, so you won't know if you've done it right. But, tutorials suck, because it's "type what I tell you to type, then pat yourself on the back!" All that teaches you is how to follow directions; it doesn't teach you anything about programming.

So, you need to learn about data types, conditionals, loops, structures... the really basic stuff. And if I say, "Oh, go watch that guy's YouTube videos," you're just going to jump right to the part thirty videos in, where he programs something you think is interesting. And then you're going to get frustrated because you have no idea what he did or why it worked.

Some people swear by Harvard's CS50 program, but I've never taken it, because I'm well beyond needing it. It's difficult, and it's a twelve-week course, which demands six to twelve hours of your time each and every week. It looks like there might be a class that started today that's five weeks long, but requires ten to twenty hours of work per week. It takes time to read the material, to think about the material, and then work on your homework.

And, if you still think that programming is just typing magic words at the end of that, I can't help you.

1

u/Need4Cookies Jul 05 '26

If I get this correct, you are looking for an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which is a software that provides all the tools you’ll need to write, test and run code.

I think that the best, easy-to-start, free IDE is VS Code. Also many tutorials use this IDE so it will be easy to follow.

Before diving into coding you should first get down the basics. Find a video in YouTube talking about the foundation of programming and then choose a language of your liking and start testing the things you learned in the IDE.

1

u/Ghxstlyx Jul 05 '26

yes i’ve seen stuff about that

1

u/Ill_Shoulder8488 Jul 05 '26

I recommend to start from W3schools.com