Items12The creator’s order
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Python (programming language)The safest first choice if you are not yet sure what you want to build. Python reads close to plain English, needs little punctuation, and covers automating dull office tasks, analyzing data, building web back ends and working with AI tools, so a first language rarely becomes a dead end.
It is…0 - 2
JavaScriptPick this if you want to make websites, or simply want to see your work in a browser and send friends a link. JavaScript is the language every web browser runs, so you need nothing installed to begin, and it is the layer that makes pages respond to clicks, update and animate on top of HTML and…0 - 3
Scratch (programming language)Not just for children, whatever the cartoon mascot suggests. You build programs by snapping visual blocks together, so there is no syntax to mistype, and adults who freeze at a blank text editor can pick up loops, conditions and variables quickly while making a small game or animation.
Scratch is…0 - 4
SQLThe quickest payoff for anyone already drowning in spreadsheets. SQL is the language for asking questions of databases, and a short query, such as total sales by region last month, is often one of the first things a beginner writes.
It is narrower than a general language: you will not build apps…0 - 5
Swift PlaygroundsSwift, Apple's app language, learned in the free Swift Playground app
The most direct route from zero to an app on your own iPhone. The app runs on iPad and Mac, has you coding within minutes, then moves you on to SwiftUI, the framework for making real apps, and you can even submit a finished app…0 - 6
KotlinKotlin, learned through Google's Android Basics with Compose course
The Android counterpart to Swift, and the language to learn if the phone in your pocket runs Android. Android development has been Kotlin-first since 2019 and over 95% of the top thousand Android apps use it, so this is the…0 - 7
Luau (programming language)Luau, used in the free Roblox Studio
For anyone whose motivation is "I want to make a game people can play tonight". Luau is the scripting language of Roblox Studio, a small, gradually typed language derived from Lua, and short scripts make doors open, scores count and traps fire inside a world…0 - 8
C Sharp (programming language)C#, learned through the Unity game engine
The serious game maker's start, and a language that also leads to ordinary business software jobs. Unity's beginner Junior Programmer pathway has you writing C# scripts in the first unit, steering a car down a floating road past obstacles, then building a…0 - 9
Godot (game engine)GDScript, Godot's own scripting language
The free, open source route to making 2D and 3D games on your own terms. GDScript was written for the Godot engine and uses indentation-based syntax similar to Python, so it is a gentler first language than C# for the same goal.
Because Godot is free and…0 - 10
Processingp5.js, the JavaScript library inspired by Processing
For artists, designers and anyone who wants code to make something beautiful. A few lines in the online editor draw shapes, react to the mouse and animate color, so the first session ends with something worth showing rather than text in a…0
