Learning from scratch - any recommendations?

[Bob Sneidar]

I'm not really qualified to answer that, so I was mum, but if I had to answer and couldn't be held to account... ;-)

I would say that any young person who wants to become a programmer or app designer (not sure the distinction) will need a degree, pure and simple. Otherwise they will not even get past HR. Livecode is not going to help them do that. What Livecode is GREAT for methinks, is introducing someone to development without bogging them down in all the specifics of other mid level languages. 

There are I'm sure great articles you can search for about basic coding principles. Things like make code readable, thinking about and diagramming out what the program will actually do, consistent and understandable variable and command naming, breaking everything down into discreet tasks, inclusion of error checking etc. 

Bob S


> On Nov 1, 2019, at 03:23 , Graham Samuel via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> I was disappointed that I only got one reply to my query about LC as a platform for learning programming - I thought this was a big thing with quite a few people on this list, some of whom are actually educators. Since I’ve failed in this, can someone suggest a better way of getting an answer (e.g. forums, mother ship)?
> 
> TIA
> 
> Graham
> 
> I wrote:
> 
>> I have been approached by one of my family to ask what would be the first steps for someone (a young adult) to enable them to enter the world of app design and programming. Obviously I need to ask more questions myself, such as whether this would be to get a job, or simply as an educational exercise, or maybe to provide a launchpad for a startup idea. However, even at this stage, of course my thoughts turned to LiveCode.
>> 
>> So my question to the community is, how would such a person start off - assuming they’re intelligent, very familiar with consumer-level technology such as smart phones, tablets, laptop computers for study etc. and social media, but probably have never seen or thought about what is involved in designing, implementing and publishing an app (I would just say “a program”, but that shows how old I am) on any platform? If it is LC (and why not?), are the published lessons sufficient? What is the view of those on this list who do actually teach this stuff? 
>> 
>> The trouble for me is that I have been around all this for 50 years (more, to be truthful) and so can’t project myself well into the mind of that kind of newbie. One guess is that one way to start would be to find a cheap hardware platform (probably an Android tablet) and try to use the LC Community Edition to allow me to create something for that; but that idea may be stupid, particularly as one would need a different platform to actually do the development work.
>> 
>> Hoping for some insights
>> 
>> Graham