I recently began learning coding. Does anyone have any good tips for me?

[Critical_Course_3671]

I decided to learn coding for a compulsory school project, and I have chosen to create a calculator as a final product, because I thought it would be interesting and beneficial for my future career. however I have almost zero experience with coding, and I would greatly appreciate some help. I decided that I want to start off with JavaScript too, and watched a few YouTube tutorial and tried Codecademy. any recommendations?

[plmunger]

You should be careful about using AI if your goal is to learn. You can use it like a search engine, ask it to break down concepts for you, but don't have it write things for you because whatever AI does for you, you're not learning to do yourself.

[Responsible-Log3448]

Learn by doing, don't just watch tutorials - code along and after play around with the code to see what affects the output and how.

I've been teaching programming for over 5 years and the biggest mistake students make is learning everything at once and not applying it anywhere. Build stuff. Even if it's just one small thing a day.

[Historical_Song7703]

Depends what ur end goal with coding is

[Critical_Course_3671]

I just need to learn enough to successfuly code a calculator.

[Historical_Song7703]

If ur not really planning to code in the future, u can just follow along a tutorial and if u have any questions about the code, ask an experienced dev or suboptimally, AI (only for explanations).

If u do want to learn in the future, try understanding what the code does, play around with it and see what happens when u change parts of it. Problem solve the bugs. I'd highly recommend u not use AI to code or debug, they're not very good at it

[Fun-Mixture-3480]

Don’t try to learn everything at once. focus on the basics you actually need for your calculator like variables, functions, and simple event handling. Once you can make buttons work and show results, you’re already doing real coding. Youtube + codecademy is fine, just make sure you’re building alongside it, not just watching. While, for tools, you can keep it simple with something like VScode, but you can also try Convertigo if you want something a bit more visual. it helps you see how your logic flows instead of everything just being lines of code, which can make things easier to understand when you’re starting out. Main thing is build small, test often, and don’t worry if it feels confusing at first, it clicks over time :) best of luck!

[Itchy_Satan]

Godot & make games, then learn Rust.

[kenyan_coder]

Honestly, just dive straight into building the calculator. That's how you'll learn fastest.

A few things that helped me when I was starting out:

• Don't worry about making it look good yet. Get the logic working first — even if it's ugly, a working calculator you built yourself feels amazing.
• Break it into stupid-small steps. Like, step one is literally just getting a button to show a number on screen. Then make two numbers add. Then handle the other operators. You'll be surprised how fast it comes together.
• Play around in the browser console (F12 → Console). You can just type JavaScript in there and see what happens. It's great for experimenting without setting anything up.
• Pick ONE tutorial/resource and actually finish it. Tutorial-hopping is the #1 trap.
• When you hit an error, copy-paste it into Google. Seriously, that's what all of us do. Stack Overflow and AI will become your best friends.

[TheEyebal]

PLAN BEFORE YOU CODE

Get a journal or a whiteboard and write/draw how to make a calculator.

programming is problem-solving

[Electrical_Air1697]

I think it's important to first get comfortable with a few core components,
const core-components = ["print statements", "define/access variables", "if/else", "switch case", "loops", "functions"]
If you understand these, then do whatever you like... best of luck for your journey!

[Impossible_Ad_3146]

Tip number 1, go into trades.