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B5L1P57R3AM's avatar
B5L1P57R3AM
Start Member
20 days ago

FreeCodeCamp

Morning all from sunny Wales!

Having struggled trying to bend Desktop Editor to fit me, i've  reluctantly decided to bend "me" to fit Desktop Editor by starting on online course http://www.freecodecamp.org. learning JavaScript which I understand is a good base to learn Typescript later on down the line.


Its early days, but I have found it interesting albeit very confusing to the point of almost giving up due to lack of confidence in my learning ability in this area. I've persevered though and managed to "limp" my way through creating my first "Greetingbot" and now looking forward to the next lessons which I will pick up on Monday. 

Variables, datatypes, concatenations and strings are starting to make a bit of sense now,! I think the trick is to expect to be frustrated and confused, allow that, leave it for a few minutes and go again. You may find times when you are properly stuck, and having AI on hand is helpful, and often the mistake you are making is really small I.e. spacing between a " and a +. Attention to detail is important and I think the more you pay attention to the nuances of code, the easier it becomes. As I say, I've literally scratched the surface, I am at step 24 of a whopping 1049!

I fully expect to return to my confusion next week, but I will endure :] 

Anyone else taking this approach? Is it worth it, or does Desktop Editor offer the non-coder enough to create really special worlds?

Ant :]

 

Desktop Editor
discussion
getting started
Horizon Newbie
question
support needed
TypeScript

6 Replies

  • Madlios's avatar
    Madlios
    Start Member
    20 days ago

    Try to use AI to help u, AI can explain basic computer science quite well. Ure lacking computer science fundamentals thats all. Normally people spend 3 years at uni to get this, today ure lucky to have AI to fast track

    • B5L1P57R3AM's avatar
      B5L1P57R3AM
      Start Member
      18 days ago

      Yeah I am pretty sure without AI i would have given up about 30 seconds in! Im not trying to rush things, just want to be able to do the worlds I am creating justice. 

  • SeeingBlue's avatar
    SeeingBlue
    MHCP Mentor
    18 days ago

    AI setup with the right context can do a really good job, but it does help when you know what you're reading and can judge its decisions. You're right about the programmer life cycle though. Study, test, get frustrated, explain your issue to a rubber duck, go for a walk, have an epiphany, get back to work.

  • MoneyMitch26's avatar
    MoneyMitch26
    MHCP Partner
    18 days ago

    Hey Ant, be assured your pain is shared 😄 I personally come from a non-technical background, with basically no coding experience before starting in horizon worlds over a year ago.

    Because of this I also spent months learning basic Javascript and Typescript, but I used codecademy.com. I don't regret this investment of time and effort, but in retrospect I would tell myself that it's far more important to learn 'code architecture' rather than 'syntax'.

    Not knowing the specific syntax or horizon API method will not hold you back anymore, as it's so easy for a good AI code environment to sort all of this automatically for you.

    The bottleneck skill gap instead (at least for me) has been: what does the game manager import, what even is a game manager, what events need to be broadcast, what needs to go in start and what needs to be in pre-start etc etc. This is where I find AI trips up 9/10 times for me, especially around some Horizon Editor specific quirks.

    The good news is you can learn this by opening the many tutorials and template worlds available on the editor homepage, and deconstructing / re-purposing the scrips to see how they work, what does what and why etc. (At-least this has been the most impactful learning method for myself from over a year of trial and error)

    The bad news is it still takes ages to learn 😄 You'll still be just as frustrated... but hopefully this can speed up someone else's learning journey as much as it does mine.

    Although, as SeeingBlue said, AI is also great for just explaining stuff. Whenever i'm in over my head I get it to explain. If I still don't get it I ask it to explain it like i'm 5. If I still don't get it, I ask for more examples etc etc. Learning stuff as never been easier.

    Hope this helps!

    • B5L1P57R3AM's avatar
      B5L1P57R3AM
      Start Member
      18 days ago

      Great to hear from someone who has "Lived" it, I am going to try a hybrid approach being one of using the tools available in DE and learning JS, and hopefully with sufficient time and effort the two come together :)

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