Start with the basics of programming. Game dev is a specialization, and it can wait until after you’ve learned the basics.

Feel free to pick any language to start with. Your first language is just a medium for learning basic programming concepts, you’ll eventually migrate elsewhere. Or not. Programming concepts are your real skills, language is just a language. Like Japanese engineer or Italian engineer, engineering is the real skill and language is just a language.

Books walk you through everything. You can proceed through the chapters at your own pace. They’re free if you borrow them from the library.

I’ve paid for codecademy before. The tasks are too simple and too non-practical. It’s common that you’ll make “mad libs” and “shopping lists” that you would never use in real applications. I recommend you try other methods. Maybe trying to make a GUI or 3D application.

Something people don’t mention in the comments is that codeacademy is only really for learning the very basics of programming. It’s great if you’re just getting started and have no idea how to program, but once you start getting into more intermediate territory these gamified services lose their appeal.

Codeacademy is cool if you’re looking for a crash course into programming essentials, but if you really want to get into it I’d recommend buying a course.

I’ve used it and Sololearn back when I first started to learn programming (about 7-9 years ago) and I remember it being fine. However, I used it on a tablet and it has been almost a decade ago so there’s a good chance my opinion doesn’t hold weight anymore.

I saw a new educational tool by JetBrains some time ago and maybe that’s something you could take a look at https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/product-educational-tools.html

Just start coding and learn as you go. I know that sounds daunting but I feel like there’s not really another way to learn on your own that actually works. I wouldn’t worry about a specific language at the start, whatever you learn will transfer pretty easily. I would start with thinking “What would be something cool to program?” And just seeing if you can do it or maybe a simple version. ChatGPT is amazing for learning to code as well. If you get stuck somewhere and need clarification or need help interpreting why your code is giving an error just ask ChatGPT and it can explain - just be sure that you actually understand what it is saying and why instead of just copy and pasting its code. This is how you actually get better instead of just “vibe coding.”

In my opinion, you’ll never get good at coding just going through “code academy” or similar gamified services. It’s more about practice and getting some experience under your belt. It’s like trying to learn how to be a good baseball player from reading books if you don’t go out on the field and play some baseball, or trying to learn the guitar without a guitar in your hand.

MIT has a really good beginner’s course for free that helps a lot with theory and background but IMO it’s based too much on theory for most people to actually build skills just from following it without work outside of the course.

https://ocw.mit.edu/collections/introductory-programming/

For games I recommend just learning to mod first or learn how to make a simple game first and follow along learning exactly how it works at each step. I learned a lot digging into garry’s mod, TF2, and Minecraft mods back in the day.

Start with a language that is popular in your domain of interest. If that’s systems, learn C. If it’s data science, learn Python or Julia. If it’s web, learn Javascript.

I don’t know codecademy, but there is also:
cs50x
Don’t know what people think of it, but it helped me a lot in understanding the basics of programming and I really liked the exercises. But I am just a hobby programmer working on smaller stuff.

Just want to mention this; can’t contribute much to the conversation other than wanting to mention this cool repo on github called OSSU. It’s a community of peeps linking free and paid resources life a university curriculum. They have other topics too like advance math, I think?

I learned python with it back in the day. However, since then, python 3 has come out. And I believe their python 3 course is paid instead of free.

You can go through one of their free courses. If you like it, go for a paid one, if you don’t, search for other resources.

1. There are many courses that are free – the only payment is at the end if you want a certificate.
2. Lua is as good as any other language to start with. Python, Ruby are also popular starting languages. If you’re going to continue to program, then you’ll probably change languages several times in your career. What’s important is to learn the generic concepts of programming, such as input/output, looping, functions; once you are familiar with concepts, changing languages isn’t a big deal. Start anywhere and build from there.

I’ve had more luck with people using freecodecamp. It gives you goals to build. But just learning your first real language will help either way. GL!

If you want to start with understanding the fundamentals, this may be a good place start: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/1-124j-foundations-of-software-engineering-fall-2000/

Don’t fixate on what language to learn. I would find a teaching resource that works for you and follow whatever it is telling you to use. Once you have a specific project in mind is an appropriate time to worry about which language to use.

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A lot of others are commenting some great stuff. I would like to add, knowing how to program is less about knowing the specific syntax of different commands, and is more about knowing how to work with functional groups and logical paths. Once you get that down, moving to another language then becomes learning the syntax and quirks of the new language.

So, any language is a good starting point, a lot of the skills you learn from it will be applicable to lots of others.

personally, I started with Basic, then C by way of microcontroller and robotics programming.

Please consider instead:

1. Fullstackopen
2. Hyperskill
3. Envato Tuts+
4. Zenva Academy
5. Hexlet
6. Coddy
7. Tutorialzine
8. freeCodeCamp