Can't decide what should i spend my time learning (general programming advice required)

[Eelk]

Hello guys, i searched all over the forum for a post or anything that is about my problem but i just couldn't find anything. Not very recently i decided to get into programming because to me it's one of the best skills to learn that i can actually profit off of in the future, but i really can't decide what kind of niche i should specialize in. I know the general premise of programming and i've dipped my toes in the subject with python, after some research i've narrowed my choices down to a couple things: Mobile App Dev, Web Design(Full Stack) or game dev. I would really apreciate the advice and thoughts of you guys about which one is overall more profitable, sensical in the current state of the market etc. (please take into consideration that im still a teenager) Thanks.

 

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[Skroob]

Python is a great place to start. Good language, popular and well used, with a lot of fundamentals that translate well to other popular languages. You can use it to start doing some web development (see Django and Flask for two popular frameworks) and then use that experience to try other niches.

Unless you have a strong desire to go into mobile development, I wouldn't do that first. There is a lot more opportunity in web development, and a lot more paths to go down when you're learning. Mobile restricts you to effectively two interfaces and two languages (iOS and Swift, or Android and Kotlin. Don't fall into the React/Flutter write-once-run-anywhere-rewrite-everytime trap.)

Game dev? I've never done it, so I have no direct experience, but I've heard no end of bad things. YMMV, but I definitely wouldn't start here.

 

[GuestUserx253]

Unless you have a strong desire to go into mobile development, I wouldn't do that first. There is a lot more opportunity in web development, and a lot more paths to go down when you're learning. Mobile restricts you to effectively two interfaces and two languages (iOS and Swift, or Android and Kotlin. Don't fall into the React/Flutter write-once-run-anywhere-rewrite-everytime trap.)

What’s wrong with Flutter?

Game dev? I've never done it, so I have no direct experience, but I've heard no end of bad things. YMMV, but I definitely wouldn't start here.

Actually game development is extremely profitable if you develop for mobile platforms. Most of the people who say stuff like ‘I have X games on the store, but never made money!!’ lack basic marketing skills like starting an ad campaign or building a comunity for PC games.

 

[Eelk]

Python is a great place to start. Good language, popular and well used, with a lot of fundamentals that translate well to other popular languages. You can use it to start doing some web development (see Django and Flask for two popular frameworks) and then use that experience to try other niches.

Unless you have a strong desire to go into mobile development, I wouldn't do that first. There is a lot more opportunity in web development, and a lot more paths to go down when you're learning. Mobile restricts you to effectively two interfaces and two languages (iOS and Swift, or Android and Kotlin. Don't fall into the React/Flutter write-once-run-anywhere-rewrite-everytime trap.)

Game dev? I've never done it, so I have no direct experience, but I've heard no end of bad things. YMMV, but I definitely wouldn't start here.

Can you give a couple examples on what i can possibly do with web dev? Sorry if im being too curious but i just dont know much about the topic

 

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[Skroob]

What’s wrong with Flutter?

Oooh where to begin...

Cross-platform development frameworks never work. Never. But they especially never work on mobile, where they've been tried over and over and over since 2008. You are always making a tradeoff when you use one, and the tradeoff is never worth it if you're trying to build a business instead of just an app. Once you get beyond a trivial level of complexity with an app, you end up needing to do things that are too niche for the cross-platform frameworks to do, and you end up needing to learn each platforms native code anyway to get it done. Soon enough, you're doing more and more work on the edges, and you realize if you'd built the thing in two separate native codebases at the beginning, the spaghetti mess of your 40/30/30 codebase wouldn't be a burden and you wouldn't have really lost any time.

Most of the time, you don't need to launch on both android and iOS at the same time anyway. Pick one, get the app shipped, and your customers will tell you when it's time to build the other one.

As for flutter specifically: at least React Native is in JavaScript. It's a commonly used language that web developers can translate their skills over from. (Do not take this as an endorsement, RN is bad and you should not use it to make new projects.) Flutter is done in Dart, a language used for nothing other than Flutter. If you have to start from scratch and learn a new language anyway, why not one of the native ones?

Actually game development is extremely profitable if you develop for mobile platforms. Most of the people who say stuff like ‘I have X games on the store, but never made money!!’ lack basic marketing skills like starting an ad campaign or building a comunity for PC games.

Usually when people ask this, in my experience, they're talking about console or PC games. If people mean mobile games, they usually say so. Again, no experience in mobile games either, but I have heard less bad stuff about that. From a dev side anyway, there's lots of bad stuff to say about the direction of the industry in general (micro transaction skinner boxes, for example.) If you're really into games, maybe go for it, but I didn't get that impression from OP.

 

[Skroob]

Can you give a couple examples on what i can possibly do with web dev? Sorry if im being too curious but i just dont know much about the topic

I mean, you've used websites, right? There's a lot of possibility out there.

Look, software development is a great skill to have, and I think it's an important one for a lot of people. But you may not have to dive deep into it if you don't have a great desire to make it your career. There's a lot of people on this forum who have basic, get-it-done-and-get-it-shipped web development skills and use them to further their business goals.

Personally, my business goals are focused around software. I've been doing it for 25 years, it's what I love and it's what I'm best at. But if your goal is to live the unscripted life, building software may just be a tool in your toolbelt to help you along the way.

 

[Val Okafor]

While I agree with everything @Skroob said, I will actually say learn a no-code tool instead! While learning to program is a highly valuable skill, it is also a very challenging skill to learn and a ruthless profession to practice.

Those of us who have lasted in this field very long did so because of, among other things - results. There is a sweet feeling of satisfaction that comes with solving a problem - technical or business problem. This sweet feeling quickly evaporates when the next bug or crash is reported.

Your success as a programmer is partly driven by your ability to shorten the problem/result loop. Most of a programmer's working life is spent on the problem side of this loop. A no-code tool helps you to begin to experience some form of result quickly, some form of progress, and therefore sustain your desire to continue. Hint, many people who started to learn code quit within four months. Did I mention, it's a challenging skill to learn.

Anyway, here is my advice on a bumper sticker.

• Learn Bubble or Webflow.
• DO NOT LEARN FLUTTER or any cross-platform mobile development.
• If you have to begin with native code. Learn Mobile app development (Android if I may add). I am biased. I have been doing this for 9 years, but besides that, mobile apps have the unique ability of a quicker feedback loop than pure learning of a language in isolation.

Finally, if you plan to make money with this skill, do know that no one gets paid for learning to code. People get paid to create software solution that solves problems or adds value. You can start adding value quicker with a no-code tool.

Good luck. I will see you on Stackoverflow.

 

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[srodrigo]

Hey, just an unorganised brain dump.

Try different things and see which one you like, or which one looks like a good bet. Otherwise, you'll never get the feeling.

Python is a good language to start with. Useful for web, tools and AI. I never used or considered it for mobile. It tends to run slow, but not everything needs to be fast, specially MVPs.

I don't have a crystal ball, but a good amount of native mobile apps might eventually be replaced with good progressive web apps. I might be wrong though.

(Without aiming to create a flame, just giving my personal experience here, YMMV)

Native > Flutter > React Native

Native is ideal, but if you are a solo developer, good luck building an app for both. Sounds good in theory, rarely works in practice (disclaimer: I've worked in a good amount of mobile apps, both solo and teams of different sizes). You might want to look at this thread, best one on mobile development on this forum. TL;DR: She's doing great, but she never ported her iOS app to Android because it's time-consuming to learn and expensive to outsource. So something important to considered. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...EQFnoECA0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2MX45zxvc8NnE9hE9TZ0yD

I had the same issue when I built a medium-size Android app with some other guy. We never built the iOS version because we couldn't spend another 5 months again on it. Never mind spend tens of thousands outsourcing it. Nope.

I think cross-platform is perfectly fine to start with. Chances are your app will be small and rewritting it later for both platforms is not an issue once money poors in.

I haven't used React Native much, because it stinked every time I tried it (I love React for web, so no hate for React, just the "Native" thingy).

I liked Flutter more than RN even in beta, and I still like it 10 times more. I don't know about RN, but with Flutter you should be able to slowly replace the Flutter app with native code (not simple, but doable) if you want to migrate down the road.

Don't get trapped into the "but design patterns are different on iOS and Android" mantra. There are plenty of apps that use their branding to the point that the apps are the same on both platforms, and they are still very usable. Remente Reflectly was made in Flutter, beautiful app and viable business.

Developer experience with Flutter on Android is way better than native Android, so initial development tends to be faster. I never tried it on iOS but I expect a similar experience (alhough native iOS development was faster than Android anyway, but that was many years ago, I can't advice there).

I have used and would continue using flutter for my MVPs, then switch if needed. This is a faster way to get an MVP in the hands of users. You'll worry about performance when you have paying customers.

Flutter uses Dart, and no one uses Dart for web development, so it's a very niche language. Flutter web probably sucks, I wouldn't rely on that.

AirBnB started with React Native and they were fine for years until they moved to native, and they are still around. So did other companies.

Some MVPs are better as a web app (ideally adapted to be a progressive web app for mobile) unless you need low-level native stuff on mobile. The reason is that you can build it for web and mobile at once. You probably need a web version eventually anyway.

Best of luck

EDIT: I forgot about game development.
Unless you try it and think it's your life purpose, or think you can make money with your own games, skip it. Working as a game developer at a studio is something I wouldn't do. Crunch, low pay, and lots of idiots to work with. Finding a good place to work is more unlikely than doing web or even mobile development.

EDIT 2: Wrong app name.

 

[Andreas Thiel]

Python is a great place to start. Good language, popular and well used, with a lot of fundamentals that translate well to other popular languages. You can use it to start doing some web development (see Django and Flask for two popular frameworks) and then use that experience to try other niches.

Unless you have a strong desire to go into mobile development, I wouldn't do that first. There is a lot more opportunity in web development, and a lot more paths to go down when you're learning. Mobile restricts you to effectively two interfaces and two languages (iOS and Swift, or Android and Kotlin. Don't fall into the React/Flutter write-once-run-anywhere-rewrite-everytime trap.)

Game dev? I've never done it, so I have no direct experience, but I've heard no end of bad things. YMMV, but I definitely wouldn't start here.

Agee with most points. I feel what is missing is that getting into desktop software development could be an option too.
Electron can be used to build a MVP. But then Python would not be the best choice.

In most cases it makes sense to familiarize yourself with Linux and using command line interfaces. That is another reason why getting into web development is probably a good place to start.
When you want to create the next WhatsApp, then don't just look at the mobile app. The backend is the more relevant part and should not be an afterthought. When you get into full stack web development, then many of the things you learn are relevant even if you decide to transition out of it. That is also true if you decide to get into Game Development later. As soon as you want an integration with Steam for Achivements or create your own servers, you need to know a lot about creating backend services.

The main problem with Game Development - if you think of using Unity or Unreal Engine - is that asset creation cannot be an afterthought, either. For this to be viable, you most likely need to have a team. You might be able to create a simple indie game if you find an angle to get a lot out of relatively little, but to dip your toe in and see if you like it, you can simply start web development and create an HTML 5 / Canvas / WebGL based game along with a backend service for it.
The advice out there for beginners is to recreate games like pong -> snake -> tetris -> space side scroller, super mario. All of these can easily be created that way and you'll get a feel for what you like.

 

[Nightwolf]

Can you give a couple examples on what i can possibly do with web dev? Sorry if im being too curious but i just dont know much about the topic

Hey Eelk! I am also a teenager and I also started learning how to code in November of 2022. I decided to dive into web development and I have to say it is very interesting. I currently know how to build full stack websites from ground up and now am diving deeper into the front-end framework- React.js. Though I haven't started earning anything due to me not having a bank account and my dad not willing to open one for me one till I turn 18, you can easily earn anywhere from 10$ to 1000$ per project that you build.

With web dev, you learn languages like HTML, CSS, Javascript for the front-end part (the part that the user can see) and then some back-end frameworks (frameworks are tools that aid you that are available for free to everyone) like Node.js, databases like MongoDB, cloud services like AWS or Firebase to build a back-end server that handles requests (the code that the user doesn't see but is executed when they interact with your website).

Feel free to ask if you have any questions !

 

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