I know close to nothing about coding

[polar heart]

Hi! I know almost nothing about coding and need somewhere to start. I've watched countless tutorials on beginner game making online but i don't seem to learn anything by just copying down the lines of code and checking the same boxes. I want to actually know what I'm writing and why it does what it does. If I'm brand new should I learn gamemaker and GML code or is there a better engine/coding language you would recommend? Any links or tips would be appreciated thanks for checking out my post.

[lavish sparrow]

hey. good luck on your new field of interest, i hope youll make it.
EDIT: at the end i found a great playlist, check it out before you read as it may invalidate most of my comment.
as for beginner friendly languages, you can't get much more friendly than GML, unless you wanna try some visual languages like scratch, code monkey or GML visual.
It's something I would recommend to beginners on the younger side that are intimidated by code and don't mind taking things extra slow, but you can def skip it if you don't feel like it

as for learning coding itself. It's a rather slow proccess if you're starting from scratch, and trying to learn from gamemaker tutorials will always feel like too much copy paste since they usually take it as the viewers already know how to code, and only explain things that are more special to gamemaker, or the logic behind the more complex systems, the ones that you still have no shot at understanding when just starting out. so i get your sturggle

as it stands, you have a few options, between which youll have to choose what fits you best, according to your available time, your confidence in coding etc

• option 1: learn coding proper
  this is the hardcore option
  since gamemaker tutorials dont really focus on coding, you can try learning another language, one that is similar but at the same time has infinitely more resources than gml that focus on the coding basics itself.
  python will be my first choice, but if you want an even strong starting point you can try c#, or c++ if really wanna overdo it, although if you wanna focus on making games pivoting to python is enough. you might learn here and there some skills that wont translate but they are the minority, and even then will enrich your overall understanding of code, which will def translate.
  learning code without exercising and creating projects is very hard, thats the opposite end of the code learning hardships spectrum from the one you are experiencing, so i would recommend after every subject finding exercises or small projects to tackle, or constantly move back to gamemaker and learn the new syntax, each time creating small stuff to polish your new skills.

• option 2: stay in gamemaker
  if you dont wanna go that route you can still try to learn code while staying in gamemaker. there are some resources that teach coding in gamemaker, but it will be more roudabout, dunno how to explain. ill link a good one that i remember.
  to tackle your copy paste problem directly, i would recommend that after every tutorial, try to use the systems and knowledge you have acquired and change somethings around what you pasted to try and get different results, try to think whatll be cool, like more double jumps or whatever and try to implement that yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVFD7L1SX-Q&list=PLwgH1hDD0q1Eq2xXKhkiJmtt7ml599CSt
this one is from a youtuber that i liked and it covers coding basics all the way to some gamemaker specific stuff so it might invalidate my whole comment

[polar heart]

Omg thank you so much this looks great I’ve had so much trouble finding a proper beginner intro