how to learn coding

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eatler said:
No I was mostly joking. I wish I had the intellect for that but I got more stats in creativity (what a waste I know). I do actually make doom maps on the side but the reason I knew about this is because they tried teaching us to use this when I was in school. What they failed to realize is that my small hick town wants to go into trades. I wish I had the intelligence for that too but both things give me headaches.
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you can apply coding tot hat, languages like css and javascript are commonly used to stylize web pages, you could pick up the skill and apply it in a department that you think you are proficient at
 
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Start with C. Take a course wherever, and write something with it. If it clicks, keep going, and build something else, like a small clone of some software you regularly use.
If you don't like it as much move on to Java. Build something you regularly use.
If Java feels clunky, try Go. Build something, etc.
Once you've gone through these, you can try web development (HTML/Javascript) or scripting (Python, Lua, etc). You'll know what to try by this point.

DO NOT learn these out of order.
 
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Practice. It's the only way to get good. Find some idea for a personal project and stumble your way through it. Read documentation, read stackoverflow, etc.
Once you know how basic data types, functions, and structs/objects (and maybe pointers, depending on language) work, you basically can handle any language if you read the docs. I have never used Scala for anything before, but I'm confident I could get a working project with it in a reasonable amount of time.

Neo-Nazi Rich Evans said:
that reminds me, i need to go back and finish learning me a haskell. i found it pretty interesting.
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I used it a fair bit in my academia days. I like functional programming a lot, so I found using it very enjoyable. Great language.

DumbDude43 said:
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A holy document. The only resource a C learner ever needs.

Halfnium Bomb said:
Segmentation faults are !!!FUN!!!
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Just check for null pointers and you'll be fine. Don't let them dangle either.
 
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y a t s said:
I used it a fair bit in my academia days. I like functional programming a lot, so I found using it very enjoyable. Great language.
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i enjoy functional a lot as well but i have yet to find a real application for it
it'S really fun and it makes you feel smart as fuck when you pull off the super short and elegant solutions that it enables, but i really feel that it is not something that one would ever use for making real software, it's just a neat toy that pushes all the right dopamine buttons in the cs/math nerd brain.
 
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DumbDude43 said:
i enjoy functional a lot as well but i have yet to find a real application for it
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A lot of async/concurrency implementations are implemented functionally. JS's Promise objects are easy and work well because you can just chain functions together by passing their return values on to the next function. The big issue with async programming is that it's very difficult to ensure the state of data being processed by multiple threads. When you pass around an object state instead of using a globally/class defined reference, you can be assured that functions only access the specific data passed to them by the caller (and perhaps what others return to them). This ties into the core of the concepts of data mutability and function side effects.

Recursion is used for plenty of things and can often be much easier and more intuitive to use for certain tasks. Traversing a binary tree is significantly easier if you just recursively call your search function using pointers to child nodes. Calculating factorials is another popular example, often used to illustrate the benefits of using tail calls when implementing something recursive.
Tail recursion can be used to implement infinite recursion like you have in Scheme without leading to a stack overflow from excessive stack frame creation (see continuation-passing style).

Math and CS researchers like I used to be benefit heavily from the fact purely functional programs are straightforward to prove mathematically.

DumbDude43 said:
it's just a neat toy that pushes all the right dopamine buttons in the cs/math nerd brain.
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Same. The way everything flows together in one big beautiful chain makes my autismo brain happy :). The parens in LISP illustrate this concept nicely; I love LISP a lot.
 
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DumbDude43 said:
i enjoy functional a lot as well but i have yet to find a real application for it
it'S really fun and it makes you feel smart as fuck when you pull off the super short and elegant solutions that it enables, but i really feel that it is not something that one would ever use for making real software, it's just a neat toy that pushes all the right dopamine buttons in the cs/math nerd brain.
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Good elixir developers make good use of functional programming. It's a skill you have to learn and practice.
 
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Code: 
#include stdio
int main(){
    printf("kill yourself"); //the important part
    return 0;
}
Code: 
#include iostream
using namespace std;
int main(){
    cout << "kill yourself" << endl; //the important part
    return 0;
}
Code: 
@ECHO OFF
REM the important part
ECHO kill yourself
pause
Code: 
fn main() {
    println!("kill yourself"); //the important part
}
 
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Start by picking an entry level langauge (Java, C#, or some other random one people will recommend) then start by writing simple programs like taking in 2 inputs and doing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, then showing the result. Then expand to larger programs. Read examples of code then change them to see what happens, see if you can alter the code to do what you want thats close to what its doing.
Over time you'll start understanding concepts like input, output, data types, conditional statements, functions with and with out return values, loops, then learn larger concepts like object oriented programming, encapsulation, polymorphism, overloading functions, casting, and so on.
There's always more things to learn. There are plenty of beginners guides online where they will walk you through several programs then make suggestions of "try on your own" style programs. Ultimately though its a lot of learning while doing and experimenting till you figure it out.

DumbDude43 said:
stop telling newfags to start with scripting languages, it turns them into retards who will never know what's really going on
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I agree, I think its best to start on a console compiling language before going to web shit with interpreted languages.
I know its harder for people to "get into it" when they can't see something flashing happening visually but i think it results in a better foundational experience.
 
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gorgoroth7134 said:
Real question - is it even worth it to learn?
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you'll either learn to absolutely hate technology while realizing literally the entire world is barely held together by duct tape and chewing gum, or you'll start taking bath tub troon shine and wear striped socks.

In short, you'll want to kill your self, or end up actually killing yourself.
 
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Prj4MW8iPT3vmFM2rzDc said:
Start by picking an entry level langauge (Java, C#,
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yes, starting with a garbage collected language like that definitely makes it easier for a beginner.
ideally a beginners first language should be
>procedural, not functional
>compiled, not interpreted
>strongly typed
>garbage collected

learning raw c with pointer arithmetic and malloc+free is good for building intuition about how software works under the hood, but it's not super useful for everyday programming, and the bugs you create with it can be very frustrating and overwhelming to a beginner who doesn't know what's going on.
i see it as kind of like assembly: every programmer should have some experience with it because it's good to know how the actual machine you are using works, but almost nobody will end up juggling x86 opcodes for a living.
 
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You CANNOT learn to code. Don't even try. It's way too complicated. Only those who have been programming since 6 years old can ever have a chance to understand the byzantine systems that power the systems underneath the systems. You will open up the JavaScript console in your web browser with F11, type
Code: 
0.1 + 0.2
only to see the result
Code: 
0.30000000000000004
it will require books worth of information to understand why.
 
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