Start with the basics of programming. Game dev is a specialization, and it can wait until after you’ve learned the basics.

Feel free to pick any language to start with. Your first language is just a medium for learning basic programming concepts, you’ll eventually migrate elsewhere. Or not. Programming concepts are your real skills, language is just a language. Like Japanese engineer or Italian engineer, engineering is the real skill and language is just a language.

Books walk you through everything. You can proceed through the chapters at your own pace. They’re free if you borrow them from the library.

I’ve paid for codecademy before. The tasks are too simple and too non-practical. It’s common that you’ll make “mad libs” and “shopping lists” that you would never use in real applications. I recommend you try other methods. Maybe trying to make a GUI or 3D application.

Something people don’t mention in the comments is that codeacademy is only really for learning the very basics of programming. It’s great if you’re just getting started and have no idea how to program, but once you start getting into more intermediate territory these gamified services lose their appeal.

Codeacademy is cool if you’re looking for a crash course into programming essentials, but if you really want to get into it I’d recommend buying a course.

I’ve used it and Sololearn back when I first started to learn programming (about 7-9 years ago) and I remember it being fine. However, I used it on a tablet and it has been almost a decade ago so there’s a good chance my opinion doesn’t hold weight anymore.

I saw a new educational tool by JetBrains some time ago and maybe that’s something you could take a look at https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/product-educational-tools.html

Start with a language that is popular in your domain of interest. If that’s systems, learn C. If it’s data science, learn Python or Julia. If it’s web, learn Javascript.

Just start coding and learn as you go. I know that sounds daunting but I feel like there’s not really another way to learn on your own that actually works. I wouldn’t worry about a specific language at the start, whatever you learn will transfer pretty easily. I would start with thinking “What would be something cool to program?” And just seeing if you can do it or maybe a simple version. ChatGPT is amazing for learning to code as well. If you get stuck somewhere and need clarification or need help interpreting why your code is giving an error just ask ChatGPT and it can explain - just be sure that you actually understand what it is saying and why instead of just copy and pasting its code. This is how you actually get better instead of just “vibe coding.”

In my opinion, you’ll never get good at coding just going through “code academy” or similar gamified services. It’s more about practice and getting some experience under your belt. It’s like trying to learn how to be a good baseball player from reading books if you don’t go out on the field and play some baseball, or trying to learn the guitar without a guitar in your hand.

MIT has a really good beginner’s course for free that helps a lot with theory and background but IMO it’s based too much on theory for most people to actually build skills just from following it without work outside of the course.

https://ocw.mit.edu/collections/introductory-programming/

For games I recommend just learning to mod first or learn how to make a simple game first and follow along learning exactly how it works at each step. I learned a lot digging into garry’s mod, TF2, and Minecraft mods back in the day.

I don’t know codecademy, but there is also:
cs50x
Don’t know what people think of it, but it helped me a lot in understanding the basics of programming and I really liked the exercises. But I am just a hobby programmer working on smaller stuff.

Just want to mention this; can’t contribute much to the conversation other than wanting to mention this cool repo on github called OSSU. It’s a community of peeps linking free and paid resources life a university curriculum. They have other topics too like advance math, I think?

I learned python with it back in the day. However, since then, python 3 has come out. And I believe their python 3 course is paid instead of free.

You can go through one of their free courses. If you like it, go for a paid one, if you don’t, search for other resources.

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1. There are many courses that are free – the only payment is at the end if you want a certificate.
2. Lua is as good as any other language to start with. Python, Ruby are also popular starting languages. If you’re going to continue to program, then you’ll probably change languages several times in your career. What’s important is to learn the generic concepts of programming, such as input/output, looping, functions; once you are familiar with concepts, changing languages isn’t a big deal. Start anywhere and build from there.

I’ve had more luck with people using freecodecamp. It gives you goals to build. But just learning your first real language will help either way. GL!

If you want to start with understanding the fundamentals, this may be a good place start: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/1-124j-foundations-of-software-engineering-fall-2000/

Don’t fixate on what language to learn. I would find a teaching resource that works for you and follow whatever it is telling you to use. Once you have a specific project in mind is an appropriate time to worry about which language to use.

Please consider instead:

1. Fullstackopen
2. Hyperskill
3. Envato Tuts+
4. Zenva Academy
5. Hexlet
6. Coddy
7. Tutorialzine
8. freeCodeCamp

As someone who makes indie games professionally, I taught myself how to program by making video games. Maybe it’s just my adhd, but I have a difficult time with organized learning, but I pick things up really quickly by doing. I wouldn’t get too caught up in the “I need to learn it the right way before I make games” part, since the making games part is exactly what kept programming interesting and engaging enough to prevent me from getting bored.

Second I also wouldn’t get too locked up trying to decide which programming language to use. Modern programming languages are all conceptually pretty similar. It’s really only minor syntax differences. Learning a new programming language is mostly just a matter of “how do I write a for loop in this language again?” It doesn’t take too long to adapt.

I use Unity and C# right now, and I’m in the middle of learning Godot to make the switch. I would generally agree with what other people have said. C# is a pretty good language to start with. Just low level enough to make sure you learn fundamentals without being so low level that you have to fiddle with memory addresses and pointers like c/c++.

As for codecademy, I tried it when I was first starting out like 10 years ago, so I can’t vouch for it now, but it seemed to very much be “Learn how to type code” and not “learn how to actually program.” Just explaining how to write if statements and for loops isn’t really teaching programming. I still don’t think there’s really a good universal way to teach it, even after taking programming classes in college. Everyone sort of picks it up differently, at different paces, and enjoys different parts of it, so I still think picking a project you think sounds cool and finding and following along with YouTube tutorials and just trying stuff out until it works is a pretty good way to get started. You can always take the time to read a book or take a course after you’ve determined if programming is even something you’re vaguely interested in.