I have been thinking of learning some programming recently, but I don’t feel confident enough. Is there any point in beginning with something like Zig or Go, and switching to something more serious later?
I have been thinking of learning some programming recently, but I don’t feel confident enough. Is there any point in beginning with something like Zig or Go, and switching to something more serious later?
It takes a long time to learn how to code (5-10 years I would say), and learning multiple languages will only make you a better programmer. Besides, you’re just starting out and have no idea how far you’re going to get… I personally failed the first few times I tried and didn’t really catch on until I was in university. Start with something easy, maybe learn something useful, then try a harder one. Starting with a harder language just increases the probability that you find it too hard and give up. And plenty of people start with easy languages and still fail anyway, so don’t take success for granted, even with an “easy” language.
In any case, code is just a tool to get a job done, so I would say start with finding a job that you want to do and then learn the coding you need to accomplish it. I personally learned how to code by using Python instead of a calculator for my science and engineering assignments in university. Besides that, it’s a great language for general purpose tasks on Linux/UNIX systems - you can use it for file sharing, task automation, writing chatbots, etc.
Writing games is another good source of motivation - you could use Pygame in Python, which has lots of tutorials that you could play around with. There’s also Godot too - you could just start by following the tutorial and playing around with some of the scripts to see what they do.