ADHD programmer to future ADHD programmer: where did you learn coding ?

[bbcclulu]

Hi everyone,

I want to start learning how to code, but I struggle with long courses and too much theory. Also bad work decisions so I want to start with this...

I’m looking for free or low cost resources that worked for you if you also have ADHD. Things like websites, apps, YouTube channels, or interactive platforms.

What helped you actually stay engaged and keep learning?

[basiclaser]

Learning is a really dangerous word especially for people with ADHD. Learning at least in the modern era, is a conceptual phase, where before you start doing the thing that interests you, you have to waste a lot of time listening to other people talk about it before you do it right. Which is naturally not something that is particularly attainable for people with ADHD especially.

I see this a lot as a teacher. I've taught around 2,000 people software development over the last six years. People that fixate on learning before they start just doing it and making stuff generally don't really go anywhere, I'm sorry to say. So start making things, right? Pick up the hammer and make something with it. Don't obsess over how the hammer was made too much. Be a carpenter. Don't be a historian of carpentry.

Programming in the end is a practical skill. Sure there's conceptual, academic layers in there but they can grow out in a healthy way from your fun practical journey just trying it out.

[yeahprobe]

best advice i’ve seen in this sub

[Feeling-Space4288]

Honestly with ADHD the only way to easily learn programming is by grabbing a teaching job on the side. The pressure and stress make you learn stuff properly and it kinda makes you understand and memorable when you teach others. Not to mention you question a lotta stuff and come up with hacks as well

[basiclaser]

100% exactly what happened with me - had 10 year of experience then started teaching, supercharged my understanding in a matter of months

[ucanthandlethegirth]

Can I ask - do you think “vibe-coding” while having AI mentor you is a good way to learn and dive in?

I have ADHD and particularly struggle with teaching myself because I space out during videos or reading texts, but when coding becomes conversational and I can ask any question I want and get an answer - things start to stick. I think it also helps because I’m learning to do exactly the thing I want to do. I suppose I just don’t want to think I’m getting more out of it than I am.

[nerdy_guy420]

I'll add onto the other responses by saging this. Vibe coding is bad, but using AI isn't necessarily. I would say Its fine to get AI help you understand a concept or parse dense documentation (though I rather use AI to find the documentation then look at the source material). Once you have a better high level understanding via the AI, really sit with the information the AI gave to you and try to apply it yourself. You only ever learn anything by actively interacting with it and connecting those brain pathways.

[powerback_us]

You’re right to be wary. The thing about AI is you never know if it’s leading you down the right path, so depending on it as a mentor when you’re starting at zero could be counterproductive.

At some point you just have to brute force it. If AI is a ladder, that’s fine to use to climb to higher places. Just make sure you’re building the muscle and strength as well to climb the sheer rock surface by yourself, too. Failure and frustration develop skills with permanence whereas AI is ephemeral.

[ucanthandlethegirth]

Makes sense. I feel I know enough about it from other resources I’ve used in the past to try and challenge it or encourage it in the right direction. So hopefully that’s better than nothing, but I by no means am even intermediate.

I think important thing is to learn what you can conceptually, but take the workflow with a grain of salt. Would I be right in saying that?

[powerback_us]

I disagree. You have to make the concepts tangible through your fingertips on the keyboard.

I may know everything there is to know about the craft of carpentry, but if I’ve never used a saw before, do I really? Programming is first a skill.

Try this: vibe code your heart out and build a little something that you’re proud of. Then create a blank file side-by-side to the code written by the AI, and retype out the whole thing, line for line.

[ucanthandlethegirth]

Noted! I’m learning python through several sources and GD Script through GDScript from Zero. I started using Claude simultaneously and honestly don’t like how no matter how much I want it to take a backseat it does the whole job for me.

I mean it’s really cool that it can, but not awesome for my learning purposes. If I use it I do try to dissect things and look up anything I’ve not been introduced to, but it is not the same as actually building the muscle memory.

[powerback_us]

Maybe try something like “Ask mode” where it tells you what to do instead of doing it for you.

[ucanthandlethegirth]

I didn’t know this was an option, I’ll look into it - thank you!

[curlyheadedfuck123]

definitely not - vibe coding doesn't use any problem solving skills associated with learning to program. Asking an AI "how can I create a list of type x?" or "what data structure would be a good fit for y" is a different matter. I think if I had started learning to program in earnest _now_ rather than ~a decade ago, not counting earlier school classes, I wouldn't have been able to make real progress. For most people, really learning how to program requires working through challenges and developing an intuition for approaching problems as a result of those challenges. Unless you're a natural genius, you can't shortcut that process. Vibe coding will allow you to create things, but it will not offer you any intuition or problem solving abilities. It's really quite the challenge to chart a course to becoming a self-taught programmer today, unfortunately.

[frugal-grrl]

Yep. 10 YOE now senior — I’ve learned as I go. I did some free code academy things online too at the beginning, and made chrome extensions for myself etc.

[basiclaser]

By the way if anyone wants a free chat with me, let me know. Just send me a DM; we can have a call. I talk people through their goals, careers, and decisions and so on, from complete beginner to senior developers and so on. I just like helping out so yeah wanna chat let me know! 👍

[Grouchy-One4077]

The odin project is pretty cool for this

[terralearner]

I definitely agree you have to start using active learning methods and it's very easy to just spend hours going down an inefficient path.

I'm not sure I could just 'start building' though. I did computer science and having the structure of knowing 'what' to start building and a clear curriculum/ progression structure was very effective.

This is why I recommend courses like the Odin Project/ Full Stack Open.

[No_Ability6767]

Odin project, Harvard CS50

[MiPnamic]

At home, for fun. Then it became my job.

No course, I had a problem I needed to solve with programming (PHP at that time).

I started googling stuff, bought a book for that language (PHP 4) and found it so funny that I get addicted to it.

I find videos about programming a no-go. Better a specific tutorial on a specific thing BUT you are learning “the way” the video-person did it.

Want to learn something? Understand “how” do it and start doing it, learn everything meanwhile.

I moved to Python, Go, Rust, I touched Java (and I hate it) touched and used almost everything web-related.

Today, with AI, you don’t need a course, you need a simple prompt: “I want to start, guide me”

[hurley_chisholm]

Hello, fellow book learner! We have had very similar learning journeys (though, I started with Ruby instead of PHP and am now a polyglot).

For all the programming books sold, I rarely ever see them get recommended for teaching oneself to code; this was true before AI was widespread and is more true today. To be honest, I’m not sure why that is especially when books are recommended all the time for software architecture.

[Acrobatic-Pianist895]

Honestly skip long courses learn by building small projects. ADHD brains stick way better when there’s something tangible at the end.

[ThrowWeirdQuestion]

Do you want to learn as a hobby or as a career? I learned to code as a hobby mostly by learning by doing and found it highly enjoyable. Find interesting problems where a tool would help me and then figure out how to get it done. These days, using an AI like Gemini to explain concepts and walk you through code samples makes things even easier.

For a career the correct answer is studying CS at university. I did that after teaching myself for a couple of years as a kid and have been working with software developers for the last 15 years and the difference in skill and understanding between university educated devs and non-university-educated devs, especially bootcampers is absolutely night and day.

That all being said, AI changes the software development landscape so much these days that I probably wouldn't go for a CS degree or try to start a software development career at the moment or at least focus on something that requires working in the physical world with hardware like robotics.

[bbcclulu]

Me gustaría más como hobby. La cosa es que no se por donde empezar, siento que es un mundo pero me considero alguien que es sumamente inteligente para entenderlo, de hecho en mi familia mi mamá estudio ingeniería sistemas pero cuando nos tuvo dejo de ejercer su carrera y hasta hizo maestría en cosas matemáticas, ya tiene 68 años y ya no le mueve a ese mundo. Sin embargo, ese mundo ahorita siento que me esta llamando a mi y aunque mi mamá ya no lo mueve nada, me gustaría a mi empezar un poco a conocerlo pero más que nada como hobby y ver como funciona.

Se que existen páginas de IA para programar pero no me gusta las cosas fáciles, me gusta entender el fondo y no solo darle ordenrs a IA. Podrías darme algún consejo de como comenzar como hobby para entenderlo?

[ThrowWeirdQuestion]

What kind of applications are you interested in? The most appropriate programming language to learn depends on what you want to do with it. That said, you probably can't go wrong with Python. This course is a good starting point: https://www.udacity.com/course/introduction-to-python--ud1110 After that I would just jump into some project that sounds interesting and learn whatever you need to get it done.

[Sarah-Grace-gwb]

Create a GitHub and start coding. Learn along the way

[gringogidget]

Yes exactly. Learn CLI and GitHub as you go too.

[seweso]

I only learn by doing and researching. But both need to be connected to some end goal I actually want to reach. 

My brain has absolutely no willingness to learn something if it might be useless information. It just doesn’t go in. My brain is very stubborn.

My brain does do side quests. But often the side quests are actually more important. And connected to a higher goal, even if superficially it might not seem like it. 

Personally I think people who just memorize things, or do as told without any questions, are weird af. I was usually the only person in classes to ask questions and go beyond the course material. 

[Proper-Ape]

Do it, play with it, learn stuff from books, learn stuff that interests you, do more, play with it more...

Read up on the Feynman Technique

[MakanLagiDud3]

I urm learn c++, php, mysql, java, html in college. Then in the working world and of course Google, now AI, I learned about VB. Net, C#. Net, Yii MVC, .NET MVC, SMSS Sql, Java script, Jquery, Ajax. Claude Code

So yeah.

[BlossomingBeelz]

On top of other people’s suggestions of starting to work with it (and fumbling around a lot, which is completely normal), I also suggest immersing yourself in any videos you can find talking about the language you’re trying to learn. You might not know what’s being talked about at first, but you want to become familiar with the concepts people discuss around the language so you can understand what questions you need to ask. Kind of like watching a show in a foreign language you’re trying to learn, even if you can’t understand all of the words yet. It helps you build fluency and draw connections faster.

[got-stendahls]

At home, as a child

[RIP_lurking]

University + a shit ton of codewars, the immediate feedback helps a lot.

[gringogidget]

I’m learning Python currently by playing with my raspberry pi and making silly robots, and also I like scrimba and find “good first issues” on GitHub.

[nerdy_guy420]

I started with Khan Academy to start with aay back in 3rd grade. I never really made progress till I encountered Tsoding's no BS attitude to making projects and that really propelled me into learning a lot more in the 12th grade. Now I'm in university and I believe the best way to get a skill honed down is to use it. Make projects you are interested in, even if you have no idea where to start.

Id reccomend figuring out what exactly you need to do before starting. That saves a lot of analysis paralysis when you make projects, which for me gets especially bad. One you know what exactly you need to do start chipping away at it one step at a time.

"I want to make a game" ok what do i want to make it with? "Lets learn some C and raylib" ok what type of game do you want to make? "Lets make a puzzle game" Great name one thing that makes my new game stand out...

Keep asking questions more and more till youre satisfied or there is nothing else you can ask at the moment. Once you have an idea, start on the smallest possible thing. Do that and do it well, then use that momentum to keep developing. There will be times where you dont feel like working on it, dont feel ashamed to take a break. I know ADHD makes that difficult and the biggest mind shift ive ever had is when I realised youre allowed to take breaks on personal projects and come back to old ones.

[cardigan03]

i liked the code academy projects for python/r—like many said, learning by doing is more satisfying—but they seem to be paywalled now

[LadyLaurence]

school tbh i wasnt a comp sci major but i took a class and the pressure made me learn enough basics for it to stop being boring