Anyone learning to code?

[speedtalker]

I've been working through the freecodecamp syllabus, developing my coding skills something I've been hoping to do for a few years. Particularly interested in front end developing, I've got lots of projects I want to work on.
I know there are various ways to tap into the coding community online, but I wondered if there were any fellow coders on here, who would like to chat about what they're working on, or the quirks and frustrations of learning....or whatever takes your fancy.
I'd love to think there was a host of mumsnetters busily coding away, but I suspect this post might drift into obscurity.

There are definitely coders on here!

I'm on a data analysis programme and am learning to code in Python. R to come too.

Ah cool!

When I turned up to start my bioscience PhD I was allocated a unix computer, and was completely bewildered, not expecting it at all, yet I managed ultimately to use it for all the analysis, being thrown in the deep end, and I think that always made me a little wary of coding.

Do you find the discipline comes naturally, the attention to detail, or have you had to train yourself? I find it very difficult to spot errors- you know, teeny ones, like a misplaced bracket or something. I think I'm so used to scan reading.

Nope! That doesn't come naturally to me at all. It happens all the time that my code breaks and I eventually realise I forgot a colon or accidentally capitalised a word or something. I think it's just a matter of practice.

Do you have anyone to learn with? I think I'd find it really tricky to do this on my own.

No, I don't.

I worked in media, and when I was on maternity leave, I planned to learn to code, as in the long term I knew I wanted to move across into more generic digital work and I felt I should be more familiar with it. So I did codeacademy just when it started, working around naps.

I went back to it during lockdown, around homeschooling, and am just doing it myself. What I find tricky, although I'm getting better at identifying this, is when I'm set a challenge, and it doesn't work. And there's noone there just to point out what I've learnt are some obvious maybe semantic errors. For the javascript algorithms I would just get the error messages saying something wasn't passing the test, and often I would just try approaching it an entirely different way. When I would finally pass, I'd go look at the solutions, and often find I had managed 80% of three different approaches, but I needed to tweak it. So yes, that makes it more challenging, and more difficult to wipe out silly bad habits, that I think working in a group would make it easier. But then I also hope overcoming these is a good discipline too.

In that case I commend you. You'll definitely learn loads that way; I just know I'd get discouraged without a peer group and a degree of structure. I find it hard enough as it is to get time to practice my coding on projects.

You might want to bump this for visibility this evening, btw. I'm pretty confident there are other coders and apprentice coders around.

I really think more women should learn. So many flexible, well paid opportunities and talent shortages in so many tech areas

Agree about more women. Definitely having an imbalance towards male coders must mean so many ideas wrt development will be being missed. And the flexibility a real plus.