If you like my programming books, here's a few more resources you can use to get into video game development.

Read more...

You don't need to buy a new computer to learn programming. It's a common misconception that you need a powerful computer to program. This guide will give you some hints to guide you in the right direction.

Read more...

Here's a hint for programmers writing their resumes: "JavaScript" is spelled as one word, capital-J, capital-S, and no hyphen. But this isn't a blog post about programmers who make typos on their resumes, but about what a minefield of low-quality programming books that Amazon has become.

Read more...

I was one of those kids in the 90s who taught themselves how to code by making video games in the BASIC programming language. Later, I majored in computer science, moved to Silicon Valley, became a software engineer, started writing programming books including Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, and then quit my job to write full-time. I now wake up whenever I want and work from home or nearby cafes. I'm financially secure while being my own boss.

This is a completely true story.^*

Read more...

The source code and compiled binary for a Windows terminal command I created to copy the current working directory to the clipboard. I find myself using this all the time.

Read more...

The Charisma Machine by Morgan G. Ames is the cautionary tale everyone in tech should read. Five stars.

Read more...

I've started a new video series of me silently coding a small game project from scratch. The Calm Programming series are meant to be coding videos that you can watch while playing the music of your choice. They aren't quite the same as tutorials: they don't have screen capture and aren't narrated, though you can turn on captions for some explanations.

Read more...

How to install the ComputerCraft mod, which adds Lua-programmable robots to Minecraft.

Read more...

Open two terminal windows and run watch "git status" in one and watch "git log -oneline" in the other so you can get live feedback as you enter Git commands.

Read more...

5 Stars: An excellent project-based book for young readers who want to move beyond Scratch

Code This Game is an excellent book that teaches Python programming by guiding the reader through making a tower-defense game from scratch. This is a book that doesn't shy away from programming detail, but manages to remain fun and engaging. If you have a student or child who wants to move beyond MIT's Scratch programming tool and do "real" programming, this is a great book.

Read more...

Alternative Title: The Little Schemer Wears No Clothes

Perhaps a software engineer or MIT professor friend of yours recommended this book to you. “Oh, you want to learn how to code? You should read The Little Schemer,” they’ll say. Your friend means well, but is completely wrong to recommend this book.

Read more...

I often get emails say little more than "Why doesn't my program work?" Often I can't answer them; either I don't have enough information about your problem or you're asking me about something I don't know anything about.

Read more...

You're no longer a complete beginner and would like to know where to go next.

Read more...

The geeks have inherited the earth. A couple decades ago if you talked with friends in a chat room, you were cast as a socially-awkward nerd. Doing the same today just means you're a typical Facebook user. Broadband Internet connections and smartphones have taken the Information Age that technically started in the 1970s with PCs and pushed it into daily mainstream life.

Don't get me wrong: You should learn to program. But lost in this hype is a plainspoken reason: NO, SERIOUSLY, WHY SHOULD I LEARN TO CODE?

Read more...

HTML is not a programming language. You can't write a "program" that, say, calculates the average of ten numbers with HTML. While some may point out that HTML is a "markup language", this doesn't clarify how that is different from a programming language. This isn't meant to be a thorough argument, but rather a brief explanation that goes just a bit more in detail than "HTML isn't a programming language but instead a markup language."

Read more...

It can be difficult to see how other number systems (such as binary and hexadecimal) work since they have a different amount of numerals than the ten numerals of decimal. But imagine that you are counting in these number systems using an old-fashioned analog odometer that has a different amount of numerals for each digit.

Read more...

A text-style game is a common project for beginner programmers. These can be fun to do, but also require spending time up-front to design it is worthwhile. Before you start designing your own game, look at the design decisions of a few different text-style game genres.

Read more...

Hackety Hack was a project originally started by _why the lucky stiff to teach kids programming in Ruby. It often comes up in "I want to teach my kid programming" forum threads. So I downloaded Hackety Hack and decided to give it a try.

I found Hackety Hack to be frustrating and was very unimpressed with it, and do not recommend it as a way to teach programming to a beginner.

Read more...

No.

But I suppose a longer answer would be more satisfying.

Read more...

"Zip" programs that can compress multiple files into one smaller .zip file are fairly popular for downloads since the fewer bytes you have to download the faster it will download. But how do you compress files? Files are made up of ones and zeros, which can't be squished like clothes into a tight suitcase.

Read more...