I taught myself to code. I have, as of March 28 2023, taken only one formal programming class, and have made projects from minixpd to giveip. Today, I'll explain some common pitfalls that people fall into and link some of my favorite resources for learning to code.

One of the most common pitfalls that new programmers fall into is wanting to make a game. I love games, games are fun, games are a somewhat obvious place to start. But in reality, a game is a good final boss for programming as a hobby. Making a game is extremely difficult- many different systems to think about, engines to pick, design to do. I personally believe it's best to start with a simple command-line application to do some common task, and then a semi-dynamic website. Of course, if you don't know how to code that, it isn't very useful- so I reccomend Think Python by Allen B. Downey, or the Rust Programming Language by Steve Klabnik and Carol Nichols. Thanks for reading this ramble! I hope it can at least partially guide you on your programming journey.