I agree with this, most comments here assume a level of expertise that someone who is literally just starting to learn how to program can't have. Maybe it's a 14 year-old who grew up with GUIs and Smartphones, but is legitimately interested in writing software. Rather than diving right into it learning about datatypes and control flows, he has to undergo a potentially painful process of installing all kinds of software on his machine, learn the basics of git and sift through a garbagepile of unfamiliar buzzwords to find the answers and guidelines he needs.

Yes to all of this, but let's be honest, most of the things in my notebook (or anyone's notebook for that matter) aren't worth a second look, let alone 'collaboration' and such. Anything that needs that is not a note, it's a project imo.

I use pen and paper. I started doing this a few weeks back for the first time in my life (I'm young enough that I learned certain basic skills of adulthood only in the 'digital' way).

Works like a charm.

Sounds like something that can easily been done on the web, so I would personally say Python (because most of the problems that you're going to run into will already be solved) or Ruby on Rails (because it can keep you same as a Dev).

Node if you feel adventurous.

No, I think it was a link you would send to friends as kind of a joke/dare where the searches got progressively worse the longer you let it sit there, so it tested how "brave" you are by how far you let it go. I think that's how it worked/was intended.

I swear i have seen something similar before, just can't recall where...

Or agriculture ... but why?

Well I do have the "Matura" in math, which is a strange Austrian piece of paper that no other country has. I guess you could compare it to A-levels? Too little?

I have tried Haskell, but I haven't come far, I do however use arrow functions in my new js, also I do love to challenge myself on codewars and I have solved quite some katas (just to be blown away by the optimal solutions). I also have a github account with some side projects on it that would prove to people that I know at least something. So you too think I don't need a formal thingy if I just keep learning?

Yeah I agree and I have done that to a certain extent and I am actually quite glad I am getting my degree in a wishy-washy field, because there you really need a degree to "prove" you "know" your shit. But I am not as much interested in learning how to code in ES6 or how to make a facebook clone in Ruby, I want the explore lower abstraction levels or like say the Lambda calculus and why the fuck this is apparently so very useful for science.

I'm guilty of doing this and most of the symptoms described fit me, thanks for sharing, you might have just impacted my life for the better.

You're very welcome mate!

Earlier this year

So that's like a week ago? :P

This is somewhat old isn't it? I think I've seen it before. Anyways, if any newbie is getting Objective-C here, you should know that this a bit deprecated and you should probably rather learn Swift.

Sounds like an awesome project, good luck with that!

There are projects on github who specifically target "newbies", by forbidding experienced developers to do the easy tasks. Since you have both Python and JavaScript on your list, PyBee comes to mind.

I don't know if www.codewars.com is real enough or not, but it's very motivating due to the gamification of your progress.

If this is now what you are looking for, here is a project from my "side-project-todo-list": An online version of Who Am I?, basically a chat app, with some extra stuff going on. I was thinking about building it with NodeJS, ExpressJS and Socket.IO, care to try?

I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I have no opinion on this matter whatsoever.

That's really interesting, thanks. Awesome project.

Neat! You mind me asking what language/framework you're running on the backend?

I - for what it's worth - agree with that premise. The language might be shit to the eyes of computer scientists and C fanatics and probably rightfully so, but it wraps all the concept a beginner needs to understand in relatively easy syntax and when I started programming I had given up 3 times beofre I even had Python installed on my Windows PC, while - as you said - you only need a browser to run JS.

I just write my scripts in all-comments first and then insert the actual code, I don't think there is a better mo for me personally, no matter how much time I got.