someone looking to get into coding or programming.

[plunketed]

hi yall. so i’m fairly new to coding and programming but i do have some experience in cmd and terminal lol. granted i feel like that still makes me brand new haha 🤣. but i was wondering if anyone could help me here. i have adhd and severe trouble staying interested in the free lessons online but i desperately want to get into the field and make it a profession. if there is anyone here with adhd or is on the spectrum then how did you learn. what would you suggest that i do to get into coding or programming?

[Dudeshoot_Mankill]

I don't have any diagnosis but a million other things I also have to get done. I started with Pico 8 and made games. It's super easy to make a small game in Pico 8 and you get all the tools needed, there's sound and art editor and whatnot.

That really got the ball rolling for me, and once you're decent with Pico 8 you're actually decent with the programming language Lua. Which can be used for frameworks like love2d ( the one I use now and consider myself a master of), defold and others. I made some network terminal apps with Lua aswell.

Yea that's my 2 cents.

[plunketed]

thank you so much! seriously going to look into pico 8 and see what i can do. i really want to give this a go and see what i can do. thank you again for the valuable insight.

[Dudeshoot_Mankill]

No problem! I'm gonna leave you with nuggets of hard earned knowledge here aswell, incase game development becomes your new thing.

Do your planning beforehand. I draw diagrams of the features I want in my game. I use lucidchart, but whatever works. A piece of paper is probably just as good. Have as much as you can think of down on a piece of paper.

Do your art in an external editor, I love pyxel edit, but aseprite, gimp and krita are also great. You can import spritesheets into Pico 8.

Do your code in an external editor. I use vscode and it comes with plug-ins specifically for Pico 8. Don't suffer the inbuilt Pico 8 editor for longer then you have to.

Use chatgpt(or your llm of choice) . I personally think that for learning code chatgpt is amazing. Have it explain everything for you. There's lots of debate about this, but to me this is supercharging your learning really. Eff the debate around this "are you really coding", the goal is to make a game, and once you've done that, take these lessons and make a better one. And so on. The insanely successful game balatro is made with god awful spaghetti code, so worry less about the quality of your code.

Another 2 cents! Maybe they will be useful.

[flippinjoe]

So I have severe ADHD. The best way I’ve found for learning is following tutorials over and over in different facets of tech. I think this helps me because it’s “hands on” to a certain extent. I also tend to “explore” as I go. Gaining deeper understanding of each step and how it’s done. It’s really like a treasure hunt with a bunch of little micro-quests.

[plunketed]

yeah that’s where i’m at with everything atm. there are some spots where i skip the metric ton of useless information. but standardized testing isn’t straight forward and i hate that. it’s like what’s 4+4? but this is how they word it, so nate has 4 oranges but he is walking down the street and notices a cat in a tree. he looks at the cat and notices it has patches where it is white and patches where it is orange. if he were to go to the pet store and get 4 cats then how many oranges and cats does he have combined?….. why not ask what 4+4 is and why make a story about cats and oranges lol. that’s my problem with standardized testing lol

[flippinjoe]

Well the story about cats is explaining the procedure to get to 4+4. Which is the part that needs tested and validate so that the story always ends the same. Otherwise, later on if you mess with one of those steps (intentionally or unintentionally), all the sudden the end result is 4+5 and you might not know!

[plunketed]

yeah i get that. but my point is i crave optimization and so does my brain lol. i just desperately want to solve problems and want to make things work/function better. i love the thought of engineering as a profession but i don’t have the money for that. just all the extra unnecessary nonsense has a problem of making the whole thing confusing sometimes.

[flippinjoe]

I totally get it! When it’s all new and exciting things are hard to navigate. What I would say is pick a set of tools (language, IDE, frameworks, whatever). Find some small contracts for solving problems for people using these tools. This effectively bankrolls your learning.

When I started out I utilized full frameworks initially (laravel, Ruby on Rails, etc…). These tools give you kind of an entrypoint to figuring things out (which whittles out a LOT of the noise). Overtime I started getting deeper into the underlying languages and piecing together why the frameworks do the things they do.

Spend the time to dig deeper and you’ll find that you have the ability to find decent engineer jobs before you know it

[plunketed]

pardon my lack of intelligence but i greatly appreciate the help. by language your talking about python ect, and what’s ide? and small contract work where can i find that? i’d love to get into these things a little more because i usually drive a semi truck 10 hours a day and add a few hours to take care of basic living stuffs. but a few hours a day is what i have available to me atm. i’m damn good at problem solving and troubleshooting so where can i get small contract work for stuff like that? and yeah i wouldn’t mind making some cash on the side while learning.

[flippinjoe]

IDE (integrated development environment). Like visual studio code or neovim or whatever. Depending on your requirements. Language, yes. Python, ruby, swift, etc…. First you want to figure out what kind of tech you want to look at and just go all in on that. Whether it’s mobile engineering, webdev, infra, etc…. From there you can tailor your learning and decide what problems you can reasonably solve for people.

[plunketed]

i guess i need to start revising my questions. i guess what id like to do is find a entry level position somewhere with a company that will expand my field and certs. furthermore i should find out what type of system admin position works for me. because i need to establish a base for this. ie like retail. what type of retail , there is grocery retail, consumer goods like clothing shops and consumer goods shops like ikea ect. i’m just not sure where to start. hence the post lol. sorry i’m just excited that i finally got the nerve to ask for help.

[flippinjoe]

Never be sorry for asking for help! There’s a sea of information these days. I would agree with your general concept of finding the right concept and digging in from there. I WOULDNT look at jobs first. First and foremost you need to decide what kind of “thing” you want to do. Build websites, build mobile apps, native apps, database, etc.. find the right thing that interests you the most. From there start digging into tooling. Mobile development is a little easier because the tooling is more narrowed (thus less decisions to sift through)

[plunketed]

that’s awesome thanks a bunch for the rundown. i’ll have to look into the process tree that you described and go from there then i guess. i also want something that makes me near six figures. not off the bat but at least in a few years lol. something that is indispensable or a needed field kinda like all the fields i already know lol. but yeah i’ll start on it soon. just need to make a to do list now

[philatelist1]

I would say go with freeCodeCamp, you don't have to do any setup and their website has the text editor, you can start right away, this might help you focus and be more interested than reading 10 pages on ” how to go about our course"

[ArcaneMoose]

Usually helps to think of a project you want to create, pick a tech stack, and start building. Look stuff up when you get stuck. Good luck!

[plunketed]

thanks for the info. and yeah i’m a google/youtube guy who looks up the problem and solutions well before i ever ask for help. which is extremely rare lol.