[iKlsR]

When I learnt programming I had a big dusty Perl book, I didn't even have a computer. A mix of library books and using my savings to print out c++ tutorials etc was the thing. Then came forums, then came youtube (matrix soundtrack and notepad), then stackoverflow etc.

If I had access to even the weakest offline model now as I did back then where it can save me hours of trial and error, docs sifting and getting my questions closed I'd be a different man.

I love using Claude to one shot interactive tutorials, so far I've done voxels, shadow mapping, sdfs for font rendering, a weird dialect of asm and much more. I see it as the perfect assistant to mentor someone nowadays, if you have actual passion for the field it's hard to go wrong.

[orbifold]

I learned programming in QBasic in MS-DOS, you could just start the IDE and the documentation was filled with cool examples. Super easy to run any program. I made music / weird drawings etc.