I learned to program in Codea since I only had access to an iPad when I was younger. I published my first game on the App Store with it and threw me into the world of Objective-C. I'm really glad to see people are still using it to learn to program.
To this day, I still believe it's one of the best ways to learn to program:
- You're exposed to low-level primitives instead of complicated high-level frameworks (like Unity) that abstract the fun/educational code away.
- The Lua manual is arguably the best programming manual for students learning to program.
- Includes a built-in GLSL shader editor makes advanced graphics programming a small stepping stone.
- They automatically shipped in-depth examples with the app that are intentionally built for learning by reading the code.
- In-app docs encouraged discovering new APIs; I took it as a challenge to use all of the APIs they exposed and learned a lot in the process.
- No package managers, no complicated install steps, no security concerns, and a unified editor.
P.S. If you have an iPad and haven't played Two Lives Left's Crabitron [1] – it's easily the most creative game shipped for iPad.
To this day, I still believe it's one of the best ways to learn to program:
- You're exposed to low-level primitives instead of complicated high-level frameworks (like Unity) that abstract the fun/educational code away.
- The Lua manual is arguably the best programming manual for students learning to program.
- Includes a built-in GLSL shader editor makes advanced graphics programming a small stepping stone.
- They automatically shipped in-depth examples with the app that are intentionally built for learning by reading the code.
- In-app docs encouraged discovering new APIs; I took it as a challenge to use all of the APIs they exposed and learned a lot in the process.
- No package managers, no complicated install steps, no security concerns, and a unified editor.
P.S. If you have an iPad and haven't played Two Lives Left's Crabitron [1] – it's easily the most creative game shipped for iPad.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/se/app/crabitron/id440462182?l=en