Out of interest, where would advise a beginner to start playing go online?
HN user
CubanSandwich
So apparently Adioso thinks "Scotland"" means "Suitland, Maryland, US". Okay, so second shot with "Scotland, UK" becomes "Portland, UK".
Some thoughts from a n00b at the coal face:
Eight months ago I committed to learning "to code". At 31 the world has changed a lot since the days when I played around with BASIC in the early 90s.
There so much to learn. The most helpful book so far has been Lesley Anne Robertson's, Simple Program Design. It's a basic algorithm book utilising pseudocode. My greatest and most recent victory has been completing the first two Project Euler challenges. The first challenge there is basically the famous FizzBUzz test.
* Warning * If you hire me because I can FizzBuzz and conclude a fortiori that I can code then you're gonna have bad time :D
Hopefully it means that I do have the potential to code though..
It seems to me that a lot of the quick fixes out there aren't going to cut it on their own. Codecadamy is something I've used a little bit and it's a great learning tool for language specifics, but I don't feel like it taught be to think like a programmer. It doesn't break newcomers free from the old question, "what's the best language for a beginner". A slightly deeper understanding is required for that.
CarlH was very useful starting point: http://www.computerscienceforeveryone.com/