Learning to code

• Hello World
• Read a file
• Write a file
• Read a file and loop through it line by line, printing each one (for loop or equivalent)
• Program that consists of 2 or more source files

What I'm getting at is instead of a full program, write code snippets and small programs. In doing this eventually an idea for something larger will pop into your head.

Been coding for 17 years, started when I was 13. A few advices in no particular order:

• Don't let yourself get demotivated. It can take a while before it clicks and you feel like a real programmer. That's fine! My fiancée is coming up to 3-4 years, and she's barely starting to feel competent at her job. Stuff is hard, and the people you see online with massively deep knowledge has been at it for a really long time, or at the very least, has a lot of experience coming up to that.
• Code quality is important, design patterns are important. But what's more important is coming up with something that works: don't get demotivated by people telling you your code is bad. Take the advice, consider the improvements, learn about the value of said improvements. But getting a project working, even if it's horribly slow, even if it doesn't work well, is a success. You made a thing, and it works! Celebrate the victory!
• It's very easy to become overwhelmed by the size of a task. Take a deep breath and deal with things one step at a time. Everytime you're stuck, try to divide up the problem into smaller and smaller steps until you figure it out.
• Try to work on projects that are fun for you. If you're not into gaming, don't make a game, even though it's a good starting point. Try to find small utilities you wish you had, and make programs to help you with those tasks. It helps feeling rewarded for your efforts rather than feel like you've completed a throwaway project for the sake of learning. I got into this because I wanted a website, and so I learned how people make websites. If games are your thing, there's nothing wrong with starting with something like Godot or Unity or some other free game engine. Heck, if you're having troubles with a spreadsheet, learn how to make Excel macros.
• Most programming concepts are portable between languages. Everything related to algorithms, how you approach problem solving, will work mostly the same in other languages.
  • If you feel like you just don't vibe with a language, it's worth trying another one for the sake of trying. Establish parallels between them, learn the differences and how it makes you feel about your development experience.
• If you get overwhelmed and don't go anywhere, don't give up. Allow yourself to take breaks, come back to it later. Go at it at your own pace. Having fun makes it a lot less of a chore.
• Another good way to start is by modifying other people's code for your needs. Got an open-source software you like but you'd like to switch things around, even just for fun? Figure out how to compile it, make some changes. Observe how it's made and take inspiration from that.

Also, there's embedded programming languages in a lot of things. Many games come with embedded languages to do things, often called "scripts". Heck, for just dicking around, you could install ComputerCraft for Minecraft, and automate some stuff in-game with the turtles. I've seen a fair amount of people get into coding that way: start with just simple things and you'll find yourself wanting more.

Did I mention, try to have fun?

Back in the day before university (around 6 years ago) I got recommended a mooc(massive open online course) by the university of Helsinki. I used this course to get started with learning to program, and to find out whether it was something for me. It has been some time, and it seems they update the course but I hope it can help you too in learning. Here is the link: https://java-programming.mooc.fi/. It really starts from 0, with setting up te environment which is nice. It is in java using the netbeans ide which some would call antique, but in my opinion that does not really matter to start to learn.

start with a game?

I’m still learning but what got me hooked (and still hooks me) is finding tasks that I would like to make easier for myself (changing file names, outputting a simple but interesting data analysis to a file), general amusement (creating a list of curse words and the looping through the list and printing f strings with them), visualizing data. Keep it really simple. I would recommend messing around with little projects, googling how to do stuff but absolutely intersperse that with taking the time to learn why things are doing what they are or how they are doing it.

Also, be sure to checkout this community: !learn_programming@programming.dev

I would go for something simple ish and build from there.

One thing I used to build every time I was learning a new language was a dice roller for DnD. It had to be able to roll a d4 d6 d8 d10 d20 and percentile.
You can then expand it to do combinations or formula of dice like "roll 4 d6 and sum the highest 3"

Only a suggestion, good luck and welcome.

this might be what you are looking for. you get complete course - lessons, homework, and environment to upload to and evaluate these homeworks. work at your own pace.

https://pll.harvard.edu/course/cs50-introduction-computer-science

Course description

This is CS50x , Harvard University's introduction to the intellectual enterprises of computer science and the art of programming for majors and non-majors alike, with or without prior programming experience. An entry-level course taught by David J. Malan, CS50x teaches students how to think algorithmically and solve problems efficiently. Topics include abstraction, algorithms, data structures, encapsulation, resource management, security, software engineering, and web development. Languages include C, Python, SQL, and JavaScript plus CSS and HTML. Problem sets inspired by real-world domains of biology, cryptography, finance, forensics, and gaming. The on-campus version of CS50x , CS50, is Harvard's largest course.

Students who earn a satisfactory score on 9 problem sets (i.e., programming assignments) and a final project are eligible for a certificate. This is a self-paced course–you may take CS50x on your own schedule.

If you're good with learning via books, then I would recommend Python Crash Course. It assumes you know nothing about programming and has a good reputation as a teaching resource.

Some of the projects that pushed my own learning were very small things to help my school or work. When I was younger I had to do 100 FOIL equations and show my work. I did not want to do that all by hand and wrote a program to do it. If you got something super repetitive but not super hard, that would be a perfect project.

Do you have a virtual machine, or a filesystem that you could mess with?
A good project idea would be to manipulate files on your system. Sort them, duplicate them, add programmatically one line to their content. The possibilities are plenty and you can see the result of your code.
Besides that, look for tutorial repositories on Github (or codeberg.org).
Last but not least, VSCode is my personal favorite, but you could check out PyCharm for beginning, as it has more features out of the box.

Heres a totally awesome mega list of programming resources put together by someone on github, been my go-to rec for a while

Program that inputs a completed Sudoku board. To keep it simple the input will be a single string that contains the digits for each row (top to bottom, left to right). First read the data into an appropriate structure, Next, print the board to the console. Finally, verify whether it's solved correctly. Bonus: List mistakes.

All the suggestions here are good for a complete beginner with no knowledge of coding, but I wanted to just add that once you get some experience and are more confident with your google-fu, I would suggest looking at the problem from the other side, and look for things you want to improve in your life first, and find ways to do that with code, rather than the other way around. It will help you stay more engaged with your project, and you'll retain more knowledge.

i.e. I hate guessing which parking lots around my school / office / apartment are full every day -> make a web scraper that scrapes parking lot occupancy and compiles it all in one place

or

I keep forgetting to water my plants -> hook up a raspberry pi to a solenoid, and code up something to water the plants for you

I've found that to be a much better approach than going the opposite direction

i.e.

I need to learn how to write embedded code -> write an Arduino control loop that keeps dog bowl topped up.

I'd recommend using PyCharm instead of VS code. It'll help you much more.

Free Code Camp is pretty great. It's mostly JavaScript and web-based stuff if that interests you.