Have you ever wanted to learn how to code?

[KingMarti]

Might not be the site for this question but...

If you have wanted to learn to code:
What did you want to make?
What stopped you from learning?


I have been learning a new UI framework for an upcoming app I am building. It's been a while since I needed to look up tutorials and the ones for the frame work I am using are awful, so now I have gotten the hang of it kind of want to put together some tutorials (the apps should run on windows, android, linux, web, macOS, and iOS (although I dont plan on spending $100 to check if they work on iOS).
Most programing tutorials are all the same, todo list apps and such, personally I never finish them outside of skipping around looking for the parts I need because it's a boring app to make, it's something that you are never going to use so there's no real reason to be making it.

Essentially I am looking for some app ideas that I can build out in a tutorial series. So even if the answer is no to the above but you have had an idea for an app that you thought would be helpful and solve some kind of problem let me know. Dont worry about it being too complex because tbh thats kind of the point of the tutorial series, breaking down an actual application to show that everything you want to build is a lot of simple things all working together.

I do have a couple of ideas, but I'm trying to stick to free stuff at the minute, like apps and programs you can make without having to spend $ on things for the programs to interact with, but one of those ideas is a smart home control center (hence the need for $ since you need to order plug sockets, light bulbs, a tablet to run it on (if you wanted to mount it to the wall for example))

(I'll probably be staying away from JS, so I wont be doing things like cb apps I'm thinking more vanilla apps desktop / mobile kind)

 

[Vixxen81]

I've been told many times I would be very good at coding and I was pretty aces at it when it came to html content creation. I never wanted to dive deeper into it because I was already dealing with enough sexism to make Dolly Parton blush. It's also not a passion of mine to put in hours and hours of work and have someone complain "it doesn't do this." Which a certain member of this forum has been very patient with me while building my apps for me when I do that. (love ya!)

Plus there's always something else to learn. HTML, Python, this or that. If I add one more thing to my mental bank I'll forget my sevens. Right now the only app I can think of that would be useful to me is keeping track of how much money I save at one store because they don't tabulate it for me.

 

[Smoothie]

A long time ago I got interested enough to learn the basics of building a website. There wasn’t a specific thing I wanted to build. I just got the bug to learn it, so I spent a while reading manuals and learning through trial and error. In a weird way, it was kind of fun.

In the very beginning, I forced myself to do everything from scratch. No cutting and pasting of code examples, no apps to help make the code easier to read. Just a blank, white notepad file, and I typed every tag by hand.

The downside, of course, is that it takes forever to do it that way, and I was intentionally making it harder than it had to be. But I felt it was the best way to learn. Typing it all out piece by piece helped me remember the code and also the sequences it followed, and the fundamentals of what each piece of code did. It also made me more capable of troubleshooting afterward, in case something broke.

Cutting and pasting or using auto-build software gets you to the finish line faster, but I feel like you don’t actually absorb as much information as you do when you build it all yourself.

 

[Ozzie_]

I used to love coding. Have not had a reason to do so for so many years, that I would almost be a novice these days.

Went back to college in 1992 to do a computer science diploma. Pascal, COBOL, C, C++, Assembler (Pushing and popping and making your own while loops etc is such fun.. not!), SQL, and a lovely thing called Clipper. Ahh, the good old days, although when trying to learn about pointers, some odd things sometimes happened to my PC, in this I was not alone ).

I was no expert, but I have 2 pieces of advice I can give :

1. Comment your code!! (You *will* forget what that code was about or exactly what you were trying to do)
2. Do NOT program/code when drunk or high! One of two things will happen:
   
   1. your code will be just shit and may actually be a huge step backwards causing more hours of work to fix it
   2. it will work but be so amazingly inspired that sober you will not know what the fuck you were doing or how you did it. (see advice one above!)

 

[ElGato]

1. Comment your code!! (You *will* forget what that code was about or exactly what you were trying to do)

Yes, for the love of god, comment your code! The nightmares I had coming in after another dev, or even going back to my own old code before I started to comment... Oooff!

 

[Nigerian Prince]

At one point I was going to start by learning Python, but didn't end up putting much time into it and just kinda forgot about it as I was busy with other things at the time. I didn't initially start with the idea of making anything specific, but during my trip to Hawaii a few year ago I did have an idea for an app I thought could be interesting. Basically it would be an app where people could log their day and create a shareable itinerary from it. With that if anyone else was visiting the same location and for some reason was having a difficult time planning their day or figuring out what to do, they could look and see what other people in the past had done.

 

[MarieElise]

Might not be the site for this question but...

If you have wanted to learn to code:

yes

What did you want to make?

Nothing, i wanted to get into stuff other people made and edit it etc. I just wanted to maybe be like a hacker super villian, that had the power to cause total chaos, from my basement at home.

What stopped you from learning?

Not enough time. Not likely to ever get paid for becoming IT Super Villainy. Need to focus on paid work instead. Tried it one day, and succeeding at nothing but fucking up the registry of my own computer, while drinking endless cups of coffee, and telling myself I had IT super powers.

 

[Wuggie]

Yes I have wanted to learn how to code, so I did in the start it was just curiousity, the idea of creating something from nothing..

then here we are 20 years later, and I am about to finish my education for developing software and games and why I took that education is because I wanted to try help people with PTSD through a project that I still believe can help them.. I just don't have the time to fully develop it currently.. maybe in the future I will have time to actually focus on that projcet again.

 

[deltaepsilon]

If you have wanted to learn to code:

yes, did some python but found it easier to hire on peopleperhour.com

What did you want to make?

needed to place trades in the market via an excel spreadsheet instead of 3rd party software so direct exchange access was needed (API)

What stopped you from learning?

time commitments and relative cheapness of exisiting experitse from freelancers

but you have had an idea for an app that you thought would be helpful and solve some kind of problem let me know.

on iphone and andorid and app that would clear the cache and delete all cookies and temporary internet files without launching browsers


++ ANY desktop app that once and for all stops ALL Microsoft updates, at the moment I manually run services.exe and disable windows updates and update orchestrator , while also running regedit in admin mode to disable WaasMedicSvc and disabling Start by entering 4 AND running this line in dos "psexec.exe -i -s %windir%\system32\mmc.exe /s taskschd.msc" to allow privileges to change auto updates in task scheduler

phew glad I got that off my chest!

 

[KingMarti]

Nothing, i wanted to get into stuff other people made and edit it etc. I just wanted to maybe be like a hacker super villian, that had the power to cause total chaos, from my basement at home.

I always find having some idea for a project is the best way to learn, it gives you some kind of framework. Although to become your most villainous super villain, there's not a whole bunch of coding required, it's more learning how networking works, how computers process data, The super villan stuff is a knowledge of a lot of things .

Not enough time. Not likely to ever get paid for becoming IT Super Villainy. Need to focus on paid work instead. Tried it one day, and succeeding at nothing but fucking up the registry of my own computer, while drinking endless cups of coffee, and telling myself I had IT super powers.

Yeah probably not the best idea to be poking in the registry, you can do some damage in there

Yes I have wanted to learn how to code, so I did in the start it was just curiousity, the idea of creating something from nothing..

then here we are 20 years later, and I am about to finish my education for developing software and games and why I took that education is because I wanted to try help people with PTSD through a project that I still believe can help them.. I just don't have the time to fully develop it currently.. maybe in the future I will have time to actually focus on that project again.

That sounds like a cool project, if you already started it but haven't got time to work on it anymore, why not open source it and let other people help build it?

 

[glory1891]

Yeah, i wanted to learn how to code. When i was still in school my interests where more in art and social studies. Ended up doing nothing with both because i wasn't particulary great in either.
By that time it was time to start working and i lost the time for it or can't see where to begin which works like a block on my brain.

 

[Wuggie]

I always find having some idea for a project is the best way to learn, it gives you some kind of framework. Although to become your most villainous super villain, there's not a whole bunch of coding required, it's more learning how networking works, how computers process data, The super villan stuff is a knowledge of a lot of things .

Yeah probably not the best idea to be poking in the registry, you can do some damage in there


That sounds like a cool project, if you already started it but haven't got time to work on it anymore, why not open source it and let other people help build it?

It's still a project I'm working on from time to time I'm just writing my Master Thesis currently and having 3 jobs on the side so the time for actually writing on it has been put on pause..

 

[MarieElise]

Although to become your most villainous super villain, there's not a whole bunch of coding required, it's more learning how networking works, how computers process data, The super villan stuff is a knowledge of a lot of things .

You must be a super villian on the down low too, to recognize that ...

 

[Maxi]

I used to code back in the day but my role changed and it became less and less. I’m so far behind now I remember building websites using tables

I was thinking in later life picking it up and freelancing every now and again? I did enjoy it.

AI will take over, though. GitHub’s Copilot already writes ~50% of our code to an ~80% accuracy level, and that’s only going to get better.

 

[KingMarti]

I used to code back in the day but my role changed and it became less and less. I’m so far behind now I remember building websites using tables

I was thinking in later life picking it up and freelancing every now and again? I did enjoy it.

AI will take over, though. GitHub’s Copilot already writes ~50% of our code to an ~80% accuracy level, and that’s only going to get better.

80% accuracy is optimistic at best at the moment. I use it from time to time, more to try and get a better understanding of how to break something down or random errors that I cant debug. Every piece of code I have had generated by AI (gpt, bing (gpt4 with internet access), bard, copilot) has been riddled with errors. I dont doubt that it will get better though, but someone still needs to program the ai until we have skynet...and then we will have other issues

can't see where to begin which works like a block on my brain.

This is one of the things I want to try and tackle through tutorials. I find with most tutorials I have done, you make a thing, and then kind of get left with the "well what do I do now" since they why's and hows of what was done didn't get explained, you just follow a bunch of steps and then realize that you have no idea what you did. I was fortunate to be thought the basics of programing when I was really young, even with years of not doing anything I could always jump back into it and after a quick re-fresher could get back into it.

Turns out trying to come up with a project that is actually interesting enough to take from start to finish is hard. I only make stuff I have a use for otherwise I lose interest in it in like 30 seconds, why waste time making something that has 0 use which is why I want to stay away from the old making to-do list apps and such, hence the original questions.

 

[Maxi]

we will soon become obsolete…

Seriously… ~80% accuracy is what our devs are telling us, not GitHub!

 

[glory1891]

80% accuracy is optimistic at best at the moment. I use it from time to time, more to try and get a better understanding of how to break something down or random errors that I cant debug. Every piece of code I have had generated by AI (gpt, bing (gpt4 with internet access), bard, copilot) has been riddled with errors. I dont doubt that it will get better though, but someone still needs to program the ai until we have skynet...and then we will have other issues

This is one of the things I want to try and tackle through tutorials. I find with most tutorials I have done, you make a thing, and then kind of get left with the "well what do I do now" since they why's and hows of what was done didn't get explained, you just follow a bunch of steps and then realize that you have no idea what you did. I was fortunate to be thought the basics of programing when I was really young, even with years of not doing anything I could always jump back into it and after a quick re-fresher could get back into it.

Turns out trying to come up with a project that is actually interesting enough to take from start to finish is hard. I only make stuff I have a use for otherwise I lose interest in it in like 30 seconds, why waste time making something that has 0 use which is why I want to stay away from the old making to-do list apps and such, hence the original questions.

I think coding has become important enough to become a part of the curriculum at any elementary school by now, if it isn't already applied , i haven't kept up with all that.
i think a project to make a good basic website or even some moving objects but on a kids level would be interesting.
Something that starts out as a pick and grab and with every attempt ask for more input from the users part could be interesting. i am not sure if this small description is very clearly, but that would appeal to me, i think.

 

[KingMarti]

we will soon become obsolete…

Seriously… ~80% accuracy is what our devs are telling us, not GitHub!

personal experience for me it's more like 5% , guessing a lot of it comes down to what you are doing and the prompt itself though

 

[KingMarti]

I think coding has become important enough to become a part of the curriculum at any elementary school by now, if it isn't already applied , i haven't kept up with all that.
i think a project to make a good basic website or even some moving objects but on a kids level would be interesting.
Something that starts out as a pick and grab and with every attempt ask for more input from the users part could be interesting. i am not sure if this small description is very clearly, but that would appeal to me, i think.

there's a graphical programing language called scratch that does exactly this. it uses interconnecting blocks that you drag and drop together to build simple programs and games

 

[Lilly_____]

there's a graphical programing language called scratch that does exactly this. it uses interconnecting blocks that you drag and drop together to build simple programs and games

I love scratch! It's an amazing way to easily teach coding concepts and it's easy to create simple games and share with the community. I used to spend a bunch of time on their website.

I really dedicated myself to studying coding a while ago and I had a lot of fun doing it. To me it was mostly a hobby and I never got good enough to actually make anything meaningful with it but the things I learned, especially how to break down big problems in steps and use logical thinking, will stick with me forever. I was always a humanities person so realizing how much I'm actually capable of in such a foreign environment was an amazing experience.

 

[Autumn Nights]

I was trying to learn for a while, but if fell to the wayside. I learned BASIC when I was a young, and made a few simple games for fun, and was from there interested in C but never put the initiative toward learning it. More recently, I tried learning Python mostly using online education tools like Codeacademy, but never finished and never made anything noteworthy. My issue now is a lack of time, energy, and expected monetary benefits, but I would like to learn to code more someday.

I also learned HTML/CSS, and was using it often for a while for marketing projects; but these days there are tools like systeme.io that can whip out websites (for the specified purpose of marketing in this case) easy-peasy. On that note, in the internet marketing field there's a lot of pressure to just hire a programmer to do any work you need. But that's getting ahead of myself; I'm still working on my marketing certs so that I can one day live the affiliate marketing guru envelope-stuffing lifestyle.

I've also had lots of fun learning a little penetration testing through capture the flag games. That's something else I'd like to re-visit more; but again, time and money.

 

[podumet]

What did you want to make?
What stopped you from learning?

I'm coding since 40 years, today mostly focusing on Artifical Intelligence topics in the field of live video stream analysis.
It's both a job and a hobby burning most of my free time.
I hope never stop learning.

AI will take over, though. GitHub’s Copilot already writes ~50% of our code to an ~80% accuracy level, and that’s only going to get better.

Yes, I believe that generative AI will fundamentally change the way we approach coding in the near future. Developers will shift their focus towards functions and architecture, rather than getting bogged down in implementation details. This will lead to increased productivity and reduce the number of people needed for the same tasks.

But this is just the beginning. Artificial Intelligence will also revolutionize various industries, including caming. Many of you have likely seen the virtual adult content generated by AI; it's nearly impossible to tell whether they are real or artificially created images.
Today, this technology is used for images, but tomorrow, it will extend to videos, combined with next generation chatbots you will not be able to know if you are talking with an human or a machine.

... not very funny perspectives
We really need to think about the consequences before diving headfirst into this stuff.

 

[JessaBella]

I want to learn. Back as a teen, I did my Myspace profile and Neopets profile... but I have lost anything I knew back then... haha I sound so lame...