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I find the best way to start is to come up with the simplest project you can think of. Then when you get stuck, you can watch tutorials that help you figure that part out.
That way, you can actually put the tutorial teaching to use, and taking what they're talking about and applying it to your small project will really help get it to stick.
A fun way to do this (IMO) is to pick some really simple classic game, and remake it. Something like Minesweeper, but pick something that's at least sort of related to the concepts you want to learn.
This is a fantastic approach.
I wanted to learn web-dev so I built a blog and a web hostable 5e character generator. Ended up learning authentication, HTTP stuff, database management, and learned CSS and HTML to handle the frontend (backend is Python).
They're not production ready, there's not even a proper server built in, just a basic wsgi dev server, but I'm proud of it and it taught me a ton!
I did the same! Wanted to learn golang, so I built a blog. Kept it simple and used other tech I knew already for the css and backend. Didn’t even enable uploads. This way, I learned go much faster than if I had learned it from scratch. The basics are good. But we’re not trying to be experts. We’re trying to have fun and build stuff.
I do this pretty regularly, with a default order. First is a simple guess the number game, then I update it to hangman. After that is either pong or minesweeper. Depending on what I’m learning that should be enough, or I can extend them in some way, such as multi-window pong or turning minesweeper into network battleship.
I think Minesweeper is a great tutorial game. It forces you to learn different variable types, data structures, loops and user input at a minimum, and it's really easy to expand on to make it more complex without requiring unique or difficult logic. Turning it into Battleship is a fun progression - I hadn't considered that, but I like it!
It's true of a lot of things. If you compare it to woodworking or auto repair, you don't learn much by just doing random cuts or undoing and reattaching a part. Having a purpose helps the understanding and retention of that knowledge. And the opposite is true too - a skill or knowledge can fade if not used regularly. I hate going into old code, or for that matter working on part of a car I haven't messed with for a while. I have to relearn and remember what I knew before. Sometimes it comes back fast, sometimes I have to retravel the road of looking it up.
‘Hello World!’
I disagree, you should start with what you want to do no matter how challenging, figure out on a high level what it takes eg what stack you'll be using, figure out how they connect together then start at your first entree point, or in other words the one you can directly interact with, it saves you a lot of time down the road to actually have something to build to and prevents you from getting overwhelmed and you get immediate feedback which is nice.
This only works if you really like the process and you're motivated to keep going. I am kind of like that and I still need SOME stuff I'm not totally lost in to feel like I'm not just going insane. Plus you learn so much stuff along the way that if that's your actual passion project you're going to have to redo anything anyway.
I got a 1000 day streak in Duolingo yesterday. Still don't speak a word of Spanish. Now I can finally delete that horrible app.
Because Duolingo isn't enough. I had two years of Rosetta Stone before I went to China. It was just enough for me to survive, but it was not enough per se.
Duolingo isn't any better. It's been useful to keep my skills, get some vocabulary, but it isn't enough!
You need to actually practice.
Really? I did a 365 day streak in Japanese (and most of that time was spent learning Hiragana and Katakana) but I still had some basic phrases down at the end.
Kanji broke me in the end though, Duolingo really doesn't do it well.
Pure code tutorilals but nothing about the environment is why it took me so much to get started in programming.
The distinction is usually completely omitted. Java as a language is fine if a little verbose, but the JVM is a pain. And you really only realize the difference once you use either with alternatives, like Scala in the JVM or Java as a cross compilation language. A tutorial would have to be "this is how you write a main class/function in this language, for/while/in keywords etc., but in a JVM environment you need a File, a BufferedReader, and a BufferedWriter to open a file and read/write to it. StringBuffer is standard library and part of the language, using Scala will allow functional aspects, but the file handling remains."
I once finished an Android developer tutorial, and immediately decided I wanted nothing to do with Android development.
Yes but you think you know everything and isn't that what really matters?
when i was first learning gamedev, i wanted to make a game following tutorials thinking i would learn a better way to do stuff
i failed to do that, making a game mostly without watching tutorials
