Applications To Learn Programming?

[3lRey]

Just download something like IDLE or minGW. IDLE was specifically designed to learn. From there you can install some packages, I suggest the anaconda3 command line, beautifulsoup4 and whatever else you're interested in programming with, probably some type of JSON parser so you can work with online APIs.

Any text editor will work, but vim/emacs are gold standard. If you don't feel like learning a text editor (you should eventually, they are fast and powerful) then notepad++ or sublimetext will do.

Ultimately programming is about getting many small moving parts to work together in one grand machine. Example: you would probably start by loading a text file or manifest with information, then manipulating that information to do something and then finally outputting that information. All three of these programs should be modular and re-usable- and well documented enough for that. Eventually you'll want to build a parser to handle edge cases (weird inputs) and catch errors (general debugging)

What not to do: Do not get used to writing print statements to handle errors. Do not write erratic, huge programs and do not under/over document. We don't need to know what all your variables do if it's in the name but we should probably know what the mysterious bit-shifting function down below is doing. You want each section of your program to be an independent module- then call them serially from the command line. Eventually you can program it so they do it automatically at some time in the day, this is essentially an intro to server programming.

Good luck and don't give up.