PSA: That friend who said to learn Python first gave me bad advice

My buddy Mike kept pushing Python as the only starting language, so I spent 3 months on it. Then I tried making a simple website and hit a wall with JavaScript basics that took me another month to figure out. Anyone else get steered toward a language that didn't fit their goal?

2 comments

2 Comments

olivia_bailey20h ago

Hold on man, is three months really that big of a deal? Picking up Python for a bit doesn't wreck your whole learning path. Learning any first language teaches you how to think about code, and that's the hard part. JavaScript is its own beast regardless of what you started with, so blaming Python for that month of extra work feels a little dramatic. People act like choosing a starter language is picking a career for life when really you just need to start typing stuff. Honestly the bigger issue is probably giving up too fast or not trying to build something specific from day one.

wyatt5212h ago

Fair enough, but doesn't three months feel like a lot when you're just starting out and already drowning in new concepts? Starting with Python and then jumping to JavaScript means you've got to unlearn some of the easy syntax tricks you got used to, which can make you question if you're even making progress. It's not that Python ruins you, it's that it gives you a different mental model for things like async or scoping that doesn't always translate cleanly. People act like learning any language is the same, but the way Python handles objects vs JavaScript is pretty different, and that can trip you up for longer than a month.