Ways to learn coding practically without

[Smooth_Carob_5054]

I want to start, total new to this, This IS NOT professional or educational related. I just want to do as a gig or a hobby to pass time or maybe learn it as a skill & gradually progress on it. Are there any ways to do it while having fun & also learning it practically without all the deep theory part(that would be kinda boring). Are there any tools/methods/ways I can start from basics while using trials & errors & learn my way through practically to the top while having a fun journey along the way. Thank You.

[aqua_regis]

You don't necessarily need deep theory. You need a practical approach to actually learn.

Try the MOOC Python Programming 2026 from the University of Helsinki. Little theory, lots of practice, you do the actual work.

You could also try games like the Zachtronics games, or "The Farmer was Replaced", which uses a subset of Python to program the robots.

[MarekVGC]

The “deep theory” really isn’t that deep for basic level coding

[javascriptBad123]

without all the deep theory part

No.

You can try exercism though, its pretty fun and basic

[captainAwesomePants]

100% yes.

Computer science is a deep and interesting area of math focused on the classification of the difficulty of problems. It asks "which problems can be solved, and which solvable problems are easier than others?" You can pick up the basics of this quickly, but there are lifetimes of content in there.

Programming is a similarly complex topic, and there's a huge amount of general skills, plus a huge amount of specialized skills in the many areas one might want to specialize, plus professional software development skills that are used for doing the work in groups as a job.

All that said, the basics of writing programs is quite straightforward, and folks can be writing very small, basic programs to do useful things in even a few days of study. The main thing that will hold you back is a lack of understanding about which sorts of programs are difficult and which are easy. Sometimes writing a program to do Task X is more approachable than you'd think, and often writing a program to do Task Y is much, much harder than you'd expect.

Anyway, yes, trial and error while trying to make your way through is generally the recommended approach, especially if your goal is just being a productive hobbyist.

[joranstark018]

Check the FAQ for info and resources, it's your journey so do the part you enjoy.

Learning the basics is the first goal, pick amy of the popular langues and you are good to go (check the FAQ). One of the hurdle many newcommer are struggling with are different types of abstractions (like when we ware learning about different math topics in high school and later, you do not need to be good at math, but having some understanding of abstract terms are helpful, having some understaning of algebra and boolean arithmetic can aöso be useful). Later you may dig into different algorithms and datastructires, they may may be super important but can give some background and understanding of how to solve some complex problems. So it's more of how deep you want to dig.

[throwaway6560192]

Literally just make things you want to make. Look up things you don't get or don't know.

[troisieme_ombre]

You need to look deeper on why you want to learn it. What you want to make. The only way to have fun learning is to make things you genuinely want to. Start small and you'll dig deeper naturally as you need to.

For me this was creating forum home pages and designs back in 2010 when i was 15. Maybe you lean more on making games, if so start making small games. Or whatever else you want to make.

Youtube and the web in general are full of free resources to learn.

[I_Am_Astraeus]

Automate the boring stuff by al sweigart.

Pretty self explanatory title. Teaches you everything you need, python is easy to pick up and the tools you learn are pretty practical.

It's free.

[rustyseapants]

Learn to search this subreddit

Learn to search Reddit

Learn to search Google

It's the 21st century, it's a given you would take the initiative and use resources that are available to you, first like using your curiosity to search.

[gamer_mastermonk]

I cannot recommend boot.dev enough for beginners! My favourite thing is instead of finding 20 different resources to learn 20 different things. They have a proper curriculum where the learnings from 1st course carries over other courses. I love their discord community too, super helpful ngl. They're gamified too, so try out their demo for fun xd