I have some background in Python and Bash (this is entirely self-taught and i think the easiest language from all). I know that C# is much different, propably this is why it is hard. I’ve been learning it for more than 4 months now, and the most impressive thing i can do with some luck is to write a console application that reads 2 values from the terminal, adds them together and prints out the result. Yes, seriously. The main problem is that there are not much usable resources to learn C#. For bash, there is Linux, a shit ton of distros, even BSD, MacOS and Solaris uses it. For python, there are games and qtile window manager. For C, there is dwm. I don’t know anything like these for C#, except Codingame, but that just goes straight to the deep waters and i have no idea what to do. Is my whole approach wrong? How am i supposed to learn C#? I’m seriously not the sharpest tool in the shed, but i have a pretty good understanding of hardware, networking, security, privacy. Programming is beyond me however, except for small basic scripts
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People seem to be misunderstanding your question. It doesn’t sound like you are lacking educational resources to learn C# but a lack of reasons. It sounds like you have been learning by getting you’re hands dirty with foss software.
C# is a sort of “enterprise-grade language” like Java. It’s meant for large applications developed by one or more teams for almost exclusively commercial purposes. If you want to learn it, deeply, you’ll have to come up with an excuse to write in it. A game is probably the best choice for this. Then learning c# is learning how to make your game.
If you’re looking for open source C# software to hack on you can try anything from the *arr stack. (Sonarr, radarr, lidarr).
You think Bash is the easiest language? I have to Google the syntax every time i need to write and IF statement!
There’s a few languages I come back to after a while to fix something and have to consult their reference manual / docs. But bash is the only one where that’s necessary just to read back my own code. Like [[ -z ${ARG} ]]? Wtf is -z doing here. Wtf kind of syntax is that.
Next time I think oh this could be automated with a little bash scrip I’m going to investigate one of those compiles-to-bash languages.
it’s the second language that comes to mind when I think of the word “footgun”, right after old c++
Thisss, it’s atrocious
one of the most popular languages, used in one of the most popular game engines, has no learning resources?
Press X to doubt
Yeah but then you have to learn MATH and I’m not doing that.
Start with “absolute beginner” courses. Here’s one from Bob Taylor. He puts out a lot of good stuff.
Sit your self down and study it for a good bit, then build some things. https://youtu.be/0QUgvfuKvWU
The heck you’re talking about? There’s a ton of free resources to learn the basics.
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/csharp official Microsoft learning resources.
https://dotnettutorials.net/course/csharp-dot-net-tutorials/ for C# basics and .NET framework (which is backend standard).
For game engines you need specific tutorials in those engines.
When I was learning c#, I found the .Net framework tutorials available on freecodecamp to be good.
Also, using the Jetbrains Rider IDE (assuming this is for private non-commercial purposes, as per the terms of their free license) rather than VSCode or Visual Studio. VSCode is still lacking in features when it comes to c#, and Visual Studio probably makes more sense if you’re already accustomed to c# dev.
I learned it because I had to write a WPF desktop application, so you could start with WPF tutorials. I was already very familiar with Java, which is very similar, so it wasn’t too hard. Last time I used it was in Unity. You might want to find a good free online course for C# to get a good grasp of C#/Java’s style of OOP, design patterns, and all that kind of stuff.
Starting with Visual Studio (not code) helps a ton. Make a simple winforms application with a button and some labels and you will start to see how it ‘starts up’ from program.cs to your form.
I did it once but needed a lot of assistance and it was very confusing
Don’t learn a language unless you need to use it for something.
That’s why you’re finding it hard. If you needed to program a game, decided on Unity, and had a specific thing to do, it would be easy to figure out how to do that in C#.
An IDE with auto-complete would help a lot.
I use visual studio
- Start writing a small game in Godot using GDScript (basically Python)
- Use the Godot docs to read about C# alternatives to GDScript as you go, compare them and see how they differ
- Translate bit by bit of your game to C# using the docs
- Congrats, you have written a game in C#
It sounds like you’d benefit from having a project in mind. I always learned programming languages by building something I wanted, or by tinkering on someone else’s project.
That could be good in the future but i struggle with the basics too. I look at source code and have absolutely no idea what it does
Code is overwhelming. Even experienced professionals hate diving in to somebody else’s code. It’s scary, poorly documented and we always think we could have done it better.
Don’t let that put you off.
A lot of us are practical learners. So like you we stare at a wall of code but struggle to comprehend it. But if you dive in and start editing, experimenting etc you’ll change the output and understand why it was written in a certain way.
Eventually once you’ve got it sussed you’ll be able to adapt a script to do what you want it. That’ll trigger the dopamine reward mechanism and you’ll be hooked like the rest of us.
The comment above stands on its own. Code can be overwhelming - start by going through an existing program and write a comment for every single line - describing exactly what each line does. You’ll pick it up faster than you think.
It sounds like you either have not integrated ChatGPT into your life yet or you’d never think of asking a tech-tool tech-related questions.
All my code in the last year has been written up by AI. Sure, for now you still need to know what you’re doing, the code pretty much always needs adjustments, but your first draft is never farther than one LLM query away.
If you tell him what you just told us, like “I’ve spent months and all I can do is parse some values, what could I code to expand my horizon?” you will have new angles in minutes and all key lines of the code will be explained to you.
this is just horrible advice
Using AI is cheating and no teachers like it. We are ecouraged to learn entirely without any LLM or similiar. Sure, i could pull it off, when the teacher is not watching, but that’s very risky
I thought you were learning by yourself. If you have a teacher/class and you need to consult the internet for advice that probably doesn’t bode well for your teacher’s performance.
I’m not suggesting to use AI to cheat on a test or something, even with the existence of AI we should still try to build our own knowledge and understanding. But I mean if you got some homework or whatever and you feel like your understanding should already be further developed why not ask an advisor which has time for you 24/7? What counts is your own progress and nothing else. The goal isn’t to let AI do the work and be done with it but to gain an understanding which your teacher seemingly couldn’t convey to you.
Ah ok, i understand. I sometimes ask AI to explain it, i try to memorize the explaination and write it
This is how I feel about music
Start with the goal to create something, be it a console app, website, web api, or game. It’s hard to just study a language abstractly and learn it. Use the Microsoft Learn documentation as reference, and look for open source .NET projects on GitHub to get different perspectives on how to build things with .NET. There is a free course on freecodecamp that will get you started by building an app, and I believe it was done in partnership with Microsoft
Microsoft produces a plethora of good learning materials if you’re struggling with the basics or specific concepts. I recommend their C# for Beginners course to get a good overview of real C#.
Once you have a good handle on the basics, I would echo others’ advice that having some kind of project or goal to work towards is the surest path to learning, because you have external motivation to use what you’re learning and look up things as you need them. Is there some reason you chose C# specifically as your next language, maybe for game dev, web dev, or Windows apps?
I did not choose C#, and after Python, i’d have chosen Javascript, Lua, or Java if it was my choice. I learn it in school, for some reason. My teacher is not very good at explaining things and basically leverages everything on us without teaching how to do it. And also, we learn c# once a week, which is propably not the intended way to learn a programming language anyway, and even then, most lessons are about flowcharts, number systems. Anyone who can learn c# in this enviroment is an absolute genius. Of course the whole class struggles with it
So… When you first start leaning to code you need to learn a lot of concepts, not just the language.
Flowcharts help to teach about code flow, conditionals, loops, etc.
You may be concentrating too much on language specifics. You’re not learning C# - you’re leaning to program using C#. There is a lot of theory behind programming languages.
Getting exposure to the language only once a week will definitely hinder you a lot. When learning a language, there’s a bunch of stuff you’ll memorize without even thinking about it if you spend time working on it every day, but it will be hard to remember if you spend a week between learning sessions.
I have a lot more things to learn and it is understandable that i want to unwind a bit or learn something that i actually enjoy, rather than suck with c# with absolutely no motivation. Like i don’t know how i was supposed to learn multiple languages at once and understand both
Like i don’t know how i was supposed to learn multiple languages at once and understand both
Because the differences between languages isn’t often that big (in most cases).
They have the same concepts with different syntax. Like with spoken languages - you know there are verbs, nouns, etc. but not what the other languages call a “library”.
Nearly all computer languages have an entrypoint, conditionals (if … then), loops (for, while), datatypes (integers, floating points, strings), complex structures (class, objects, structs) and functions.
You seem motivated to learn but struggling with your instructor. Copy/paste from course material in an annoying way to learn. What helps is to really “get in there”. To debug something. Only then will you truly hate programming 😁.
Others have suggested a personal project and I’d recommend it too. Even simple things are fine - but try to modify them to do more and more. The more you’re iterating over the same codebase the more comfortable you’ll become with it.
Harvard University makes CS50 (an intro to programming course) freely available and it’s excellent. It does use Python, which won’t help with the specifics of C#, but it would help with the other gaps in your knowledge.
And remember - concepts translate between languages, so if you understand classes in Python then you just need to learn “how does C# do classes?”.
The languages i used up until now do not have entry points (intrepeted). I know what is that, but i don’t know where they should be. Up until now, i only used llms for debugging, i’m far from correcting source code, i’m happy if i can write something that even remotely resembles to the correct structure. Also, is it a good idea to start adding smaller functions to already existing c# projects made by others on github (not to publish, just for myself, don’t want to ruin someone’s work with malicious commits). My python understanding is vague too. Only class i ever defined was a csv file reading class like class Class: def init(self, stuff1, stuff2): self.stuff1 = str(stuff1) self.stuff2 = int(stuff2)
Checkout CS50. It’s free and should help with the basics, even if it does use Python rather than C#. As I said before - the concepts are transferable. You need to learn more than just “syntax”.
Programming can be hard at first. Don’t be discouraged if you find it confusing or if you need to start with very simple things. There is a lot to learn so keep your expectations low, and feel free to return and ask questions. And if you’re comfortable using AI you can use it to explain concepts and code rather than just having it spit out solutions. It’s usually pretty good for this since there is a lot of material on the internet for it to have learned from.
