Best app to learn programming these days?

Those apps aren't helpful sadly. The best way to learn programming is by making things. The apps can make you think you're learning syntax, apis, OOP, a language, or other concepts but the second you're asked to make something or apply your knowlage it's all useless.

You're not going to learn much from a phone app. Specially programming.

"Learning apps" are mostly gamified gimmicks. If you never learned programming, you need a good book explaining the concepts of what you're trying to learn, a computer, a project, and the internet to search when you get stuck.

I know it's the boring answer, but this is one of those skills that it's basically a lot of tinkering, exploration, and nose to the grindstone.

Writing your own!

Jokes aside, the best way to learn is to start writing your own program/app and follow website tutorials

You'll need a computer, doesn't matter if it's a desktop, an old laptop or whatever. You'll not be able to actually learn programming properly on a phone (besides theory..).

I like to suggest to get started with online Python courses: https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-python-3 (Needs a free account nowadays) where you'll learn the very basics of programming. What are variables? Conditions? Loops? Bit of object oriented programming (OOP) and so on.

After doing the course you very much have to download Python and work on your own computer (instead of in the browser) if you want to learn and experiment more.

Just to get started with the actual language doesn't matter much. Though at some point you should look at strongly typed languages (like C#) to get a feel for data types. What is an integer? Bool? Float? And so on, something that JavaScript and Python (to some degree) mostly hides from you. One step even further would be C++ where you learn about pointers, how memory works etc. but that's not necessary for the first year or so (and might only be "good to know" if you don't intend to go that low level).

At that point you can probably write whatever little program you want and get it to run. The next step is algorithms, design patterns, how to structure and organize code (concepts like SOLID), databases, source control, security and much more vague knowledge. That's where it gets difficult and some things you'll only pick up when actually working in a team.

I don't think an app will help you. One of the core concepts you have to learn is, how to identify a problem, deconstruct it into it's core components and write it in way the pc understands.

Whenever I see someone learning programming there is usually a moment when it clicks and it suddenly gets easier.

You have to learn the basic concepts of a programming language. Usually there are a lot of concepts that are similar in different languages but also a lot of details that are not.

I learned programming by reading and experimenting with code but that was the hard way. In your case I'd try to find a course that you like and use that. That is your starting point. When you a through you have to find your own projects to really leant how to program.

https://www.hedy.org/start

For someone learning programming from zero, it was specifically invented to be:

Hedy is the easy way to get started with textual programming languages! Hedy is free to use, open source, and unlike any other textual programming language in three ways.

1. Hedy is multi-lingual, you can use Hedy in your own language
2. Hedy is gradual, so you can learn one concept and its syntax a time
3. Hedy is built for the classroom, allowing teachers to fully customize their student's experience

Adding to the points above:

At the end of the gradual progression, Hedy becomes vanilla Python.

An aspect of the 3rd point is having an online editor & execution environment, so you don't need to deal with setup.

After completing the Hedy lessons, can follow up with other learning resources like freecodecamp.org or codeacademy.com.

the best apps for learning programming are the ones you write. try, fail, try again, keep at it, eventually succeed.

I have tried a lot apps. I hate then all. They are full of ads and everyone have subcriptions, rabbit holes for idiots who are ready to give away money. Better learn by books, guides, some youtubes introductions, and by trying some personal project, like even building a minigame or basic program.

Cobol.

It's still in use and all the people who know it are dying or already dead.

On the other hand, I think if you are approaching your career through popularity and not your own talent, you are not going very far in your career.

Does GCC count?

Implement a calculator in Java. Easy to set up, easy to start and easy to extend on nearly anything.

Despite the (valid) criticisms you will see here, you have to start learning somewhere, so an app will have to do. Or some tutorials, there is a bunch on Youtube. Some 5 years ago Codecademy was the trendy app, Exercism as well. I'm out of the loop these days.

The goal is getting an internship (even unpaid) as quickly as possible. Most real skills are not taught on these courses, or anywhere formally.

Aside of that, once you get through the basic level, start reading threads on Hackernews and lobste.rs. You will understand nothing. And that's good. Try to make sense of it by googling definitions and concepts, that's how you can learn CS theory outside of a uni.

Understood. Could you recommend me a good course, then? I'd like to use these IT skills to eventually find a job in Europe. What field looks most promising to you?

Swift Playgrounds on iPadOS

@SurpriZe
I saw people stating you *need* a proper computer, with keyboard and mouse, and while I do think that would indeed be ideal, there are some things that can be done through the phone.
One app that is not directly related to programming, but is a great way to setup a system for programming, and learn a lot about terminals and the linux system, is #termux (though I should warn you to NOT download it from the appstore, install it from #fdroid instead)
From there you can install many things you actually use for programming, like a compiler, text editors, python, and things that quite often courses pretend don't exist, by giving you everything already setup in a virtual environment (not saying that is never a good thing, just that it often leaves a gap between learning and actually doing).
Some sites I would also recommend for learning are https://www.learn-c.org/ for the C language and both https://mystery.knightlab.com/ and https://selectstarsql.com/ (in that order) for learning SQL. They're great because they let you type the code directly in a window for the problem, and execute right there, so it's pretty easy to do it from the mobile (though not ideal).
A nice place to learn more about web dev is directly from https://www.w3schools.com/ where there are great resources on #HTML #CSS and #JavaScript and many more. They also have interactive "try it yourself" spaces in most examples, so you can test the concepts directly on they're page.
For help with understanding termux, take a look ate their wiki pages at https://wiki.termux.com
Hope that helps, and hope you get to love it. If you want to talk about, feel free to send me a message.