programming truths
If teenage me came up to me today and asked for programming advice.
Produce code ASAP
just use vscode, it works and comes with a lot of nice things out of the box. the less overhead you have to programming the better.
pick python a dynamically languages with a lot of stuff abstracted away, and comes with a large community, this limits the burden of knowing low-level stuff like memory management to get started with your projects starting out & a community there for easy googling + stack overflow.
the secret to learning a language is working in it, not reading. do not fall into the trap of reading a book or reading the documentation. start with a project in mind, reach for the documentation when you really need it. this immersive approach will help you infinitely more than straight reading.
Project-based learning
- ideas for projects that I've used in the past:
- game of life
- wordle
- 2048
- quine
- lisp interpreter
- chip8 emulator
- rasterizer
- ray tracer
NO to rabbit holes
- rabbit holes are things with no demonstrable output when chased. avoid them at all costs.