#how to code

An important step in my life. I started learning with my own set. That's BASIC, Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic, Delphi. I've always liked these computer technologies. And since that's how it turned out, I didn't deny myself the pleasure and started learning them from scratch. And the normal way. To avoid getting stuck. I took courses. I tried to consolidate my knowledge through practice. So far, the practice has been less successful.

BASIC is a QB64 dialect. It's compatible with the legendary BASIC from MS-DOS, which is Microsoft's. Plus, there's some new stuff to make it more user-friendly. Then there's Turbo Pascal. I learned it specifically as Turbo Pascal, but in the Free Pascal environment, and then I added courses specifically on Free Pascal. But I'm also a big fan of Turbo Pascal, after all. Visual Basic. That's the modern version in Microsoft Visual Studio. I think it's more accurate to call it with the prefix dot.Net. VBA.NET. But overall, I'm a fan of Visual Basic 6.0. And Delphi, but I learned it in the Lazarus environment. Specifically, as a Lazarus solution. That is, a modern version based on Free Pascal.

That's the first step. Then, I'm learning C SHARP. And I'm still learning. And I'm learning the simplest Web. I can use C Sharp in computer game engines. At least, I think so. For example, there's Unity technology. I've needed Web development for a long time. It's been a while since I should have started learning it. It's for a website. And website building. It's also an interesting subject. It's a combination of technologies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and SQL.

I'm currently working on these technologies. I'm still learning. Just completing the lessons is one thing. But they still need to be reinforced. That means practice. Writing programs. Creating projects. I've completed the lessons. But the practical side—that's still a bit tricky. But it's coming along. If I'm dreaming, I bought RPG MAKER 2003 on Steam. I'm thinking about mastering it, maybe. I don't have room for so much anymore. I love drawing. I also love writing stories. And all of this is being shoved and packaged into RPG MAKER. Steam also has previous versions like RPG MAKER XP and RPG MAKER 2000. It's also an interesting subject.

This time, I'm learning the normal way. The way it should be. Lessons. Reinforcing the material. Practice. It's already starting to feel stable, like, for about a year. This is a new stage. My goal will be to create simple games and simple programs. Like office solutions. Like a calendar. You know, I just love drawing. So, I'll draw and do some programming. This set of technologies is quite suitable for that. These are BASIC, Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic, Lazarus. And web technologies – at least HTML and CSS. It's suitable for such tasks.

Now I'm consolidating the knowledge I've gained. I'm repeating everything. And I'm doing it rather slowly, to be honest. But I'm already building my own knowledge base. I'm taking notes. I'm recording information. Facts. And theses. I also have an Excel spreadsheet in which I compare BASIC, Pascal, Visual Basic, and Lazarus. This also takes time. I have notes in Word or Excel format with the specifics of each language. Again, it's the same old four.

I'm working on systematizing the knowledge I've gained. Maybe someday I'll share this online. If I do everything right, as they say. I'll get to the end. I'll format everything correctly. And write it down. I'll check my notes. I'll practice. As Steve Jobs said in one of his interviews. He was treated well in life. But he was given a chance, and he succeeded. That's why he offers young people good conditions. And so am I. I learned online. And I'll share my knowledge online. I'll try to simply explain. Not to be clever. But that's if I learn. Otherwise, halfway through, my knowledge will be just so-so. First, study. Then practice. Then projects. Then projects, and then you can have the accumulated experience to share your knowledge. This is important, necessary, and responsible! For now, I'm just learning. And I'll continue on this path in 2026.

Dima Link is making retro videogames, apps, a little of music, write stories, and some retro more.

WEBSITE: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html ITCHIO: https://dimalink.itch.io/

Node JS

If you’re here because you’re coding a discord bot using Javascript or you’re just coding something using Javascript, Node JS can help you. It is basically a Javascript runtime application.

You can download it from: https://nodejs.org/en/download/

How it works:

1. Create a new file called “hello.js” and fill it up with the code as shown above.

2. Go to your terminal. (For those who might not know, you can click Terminal from the top tab > New Terminal. This will pull up the console for you.

3. Make sure that the directory of your terminal is the place where your hello.js file is at. If not, you can always use ls to list the different folders in that directory and cd to change into that directory as shown below:

My terminal was in the Github folder and I used ls to list all the folders in the Github folder. From there, I can see the cafe-bot folder where my hello.js file is located in. So I used cd cafe-bot to move into that folder.

4. Run node hello.js and you will see “Hello World”, which is what your code was supposed to output.

And there you have it! I hope that was a simple and easy-to-understand explanation on Visual Studio Code and Node JS.

Error You Might Face:

Sometimes when you run node for the first time after installing, you might face this error. 

From what I have noticed, this tends to usually happen to Windows users. Unfortunately, since I am using a MacOS, it’s hard for me to screenshot the process. But no fear, we have Codez Jerry who have the perfect solution here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg4t48BPmh8