#but a minecraft mod? i don't think there was a 10yo in my age bracket who hadn't tried minecraft

[way-to-go-you-funky-little-blue]

part of what got me started (at least in programming) was the autism hyperfocus but the biggest enabler was just an easy and convenient place to start

like if your easiest place to start is fucking around in Lua using computercraft then go wild

because if you feel like you're getting overwhelmed by something going 'okay to get started you have to install these 15 things, change system settings, and okay all these boxes' meanwhile you just want to Start Somewhere, then that might keep you from actually starting, and it's much better to find something that works than it is to keep yourself from ever actually beginning because of analysis paralysis or anxiety avoidance or something

which leads me to: try Python, it's a relatively friendly place to start, there's multiple online tutorial places for it (though i can't vouch for any one in particular), there's generally a lot less having to go around dealing with fuckery to just get it working, and if you want to avoid installing something to start there's Jupyter and Google Colab that let you just do stuff in your web browser (hell i've even used the latter at uni)

beyond language specifics, one of the biggest things of it (at least for me) is admitting to myself that 'hey i have no idea how to do this' and going and asking questions, whether i'm asking That One Friend Who Knows The Things That Work or just a search engine, or checking the documentation, or even something like stack exchange or a discussion forum about the language

there's also having to understand that it doesn't need to be optimized 100%, like, you can make something that maybe could be faster or could use less memory or could be more intuitive, but don't let your fear of not being good at it keep you from doing the thing, because you can optimize a solution that works, but you can't just deliver a nonexistent solution

i get that there's a lot more to it, and the whole "Excellence is not an art, it's a habit. We are what we repeatedly do." really factors into just, knowing how to do stuff, knowing how to do it quickly, but everyone has to start somewhere, and the time's going to pass anyways, just always have to be ready to learn from it and get better

Hi Maia! Do you have any tips for getting started in programing and Computer Science in general? I've wanted to get into the field but just, don't know where to start cause it all feels like a lot vnv

i always struggle answering questions like this cause like i basically got into this stuff just via autism hyperfocus and self learning that way and forcing my way through it like that, but im gonna post this anyways so maybe people in the notes will have better input!!