3/30/26
I gave some advice recently to a non-programmer about learning to program. I’m asked this occasionally and want to have it publicly available. I think my philosophy holds true in most cases I’d give advice. I think the specifics can vary wildly and are incredibly personal.
My general philosophy is that “whatever software makes sense to you or you have any affinity to you should just stick with”. It seems to matter most that you personally find it useful/fun/interesting so that you stick with it when learning. As a programmer, its all kinda the same. Everything has tradeoffs and you can develop expertise in specific tooling over time. But as a beginner none of that matters.
If you have no idea, then trying popular things like Unity, Godot, or Game Maker are probably the ways to go. Just pick a popular thing and feel it out. I imagine “use whatever tool you find a popular course thats making a thing you find interesting” is probably the way to start? Then for me, it was try and make your own tiny projects repeatedly.
Curious to hear what others say on this! I’m not sure what good tuts are these days. I didn’t learn programming and games at the same time, so I’m not much help here. Not sure what’s popular toolwise in games either, but I assume Unity is still pretty popular.
If we’re in the realm of just tasting programming, I’d also suggest Processing (P5.js which I linked is just a web version). It’s an environment that is more intended for like artistic programmatic sketching than making real games. I’ve heard that it can resonate more with folks than something like a traditional “learn to program” course might.
This tut would be my rec in that arena, and it has a web editor you can use: https://p5js.org/tutorials/get-started/
You can make silly things like this with the tool: https://ryankubik.com/genuary
I think the idea of just taste some code and see if it’s gross or not is a good idea. I bounced off many different presentations of learning to program before it worked for me.