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Introduction
Years ago, I went to school to learn programming. There were tons of concepts introduced, definitions given, and time spent learning theory and background. For me, it was the worst way to learn the subject. Outside of school, I found tutorials to work on things I wanted to do and found that diving right in made it much easier to learn.
This website exists in that spirit - rather than drowning you in technical terms and historical background, we’ll dive right in together. Sometimes we’ll make mistakes along the way, but we’ll talk about what went wrong and learn from it. So what are you waiting for? Click one of the links below, and Let’s Make a Program together!
C#
C# is my bread and butter. It’s a powerful modern language created by Microsoft, who also gives their dev tools away for free for individual use. I’ve used it longer than any other language, so you can expect more C# tutorials here than anything else.
Getting Set Up
You’ll want to download and install Visual Studio Community Edition from Microsoft before following any C# tutorials. You can find online code editors, but VS includes so many helpful features that will make your life so much easier.
As a bonus, it will prepare you to work with that same tool if you get hired to work at a place that uses C#!
Programs
- Hello World - A perfect place to start as a brand new programmer
Python
Python is a hugely popular scripting language that can run on just about anything. If you want to learn without downloading anything, Python is a good place to start because of the slew of in-browser Python editors out there.
Getting Set Up
One of the beauties of Python is that it’s a lightweight language that can run without a lot of overhead. As a result, you have a few options when it comes to writing Python. The two basic options are to either A) download and install a code editor or B) use a website that will interpret your Python code directly in the browser. There are many possible options, but the two I would recommend are:
- Use CodeSkulptor and write Python in your browser. You can save your code to a URL in order to come back to it later or share with others, which is very handy.
- Download and install Visual Studio Community Edition from Microsoft. I program primarily in C#, but VS is free, powerful, and can be used to program in many languages, including Python.
- For a smaller, lighter editor, you could use Visual Studio Code. Like its older, bigger brother, VS Code can be used to program many different languages. If you get used to using it for Python, you can easily add components to program in other languages as well.
Programs
- Hello World - A perfect place to start as a brand new programmer