trying to learn code

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I have been trying for months to learn code at code academy Python), but just cannot seem to grasp it. I think it is an issue of not understanding when to put something in quotation marks or in parenthesis. Whatever it is, I just cant figure it out. Its making me feel like I have the IQ of a street lamp, but seriously, it cant be THAT hard.

what am I doing wrong? Anyone can help me understand this better?

First off, please try and be easy on yourself. It's hard in all kinds of fields to see both big picture and details. It might seem like this would be an easy thing, but it's not.

Myself, the first really neat C++ program I wrote was getting it to print a diamond shape of various characters of various widths. And then I kind of viewed a program as a screenplay with a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning is set up of variables, the middle is usually useful looping, the end is pulling out variables and printing in an useful way.

But then my preferred cognitive orientation is story and narrative, as opposed to abstract reasoning or thinking in pictures. So, you've got to find your own way. Just keep going at it in various ways, including diagonally so to speak.

PS Is code academy formal university classes or something more casual?

code academy is a free online class that teaches Python, Ruby, Java, HTML...

http://www.codecademy.com/

I don't know about all that, but I do know that for myself I generally learn coding languages much better when I actually have a coding project in that language I need to work on.
Google is your best friend.
Usually just asking a specific coding question will get you plenty of answers, and one of them will generally be what you need.

Stackoverflow often has the best answers, imho, but sometimes it's best to simply look at the official docs for the language to figure out a particular bit of code.

I've never dealt with Python, but generally speaking in most coding languages I've dealt with quotation marks are used to deliniate a string, which is to say a group of characters, whereas parentheses are used to contain what's passed to a function, the function itself, or sometimes both, although most languages use brackets for the functions themselves.

Hope that helps.

In my opinion, Python is not a very good starter language. It does not share much with most of the other "C-like" languages, and tends to be very picky about things such as indentation since it is a brace-free language. I find it very alien compared to any other language. C is also very unforgiving as a starter language. I would suggest Javascript (not Java) as that is the way everything is going, PHP will be dead in a matter of a few more years. I have just switched over from all-PHP to all-Javascript (using Node.js) for web development and I sincerely hope I never have to go back and touch any of the nasty PHP stuff ever again. And I would never bother with Python unless I was trying to patch something already written in it.

A "fun" place to apply a early language is Unity3D (which is very C# like). You get to play with a huge game development environment and gives you that instant feedback of success

I agree on the javascript suggestion. I find python using white space to define scope silly

OP:

You may want to check out TheNewBoston on YouTube. This channel offers excellent beginner tutorials for both Java and C++. Both of these languages can be used with Eclipse or Netbeans, which are free IDEs. As an alternative to Python, you can also check out the newly developed Go (or Golang, which it's also refered to) language; it's easier to learn, and coding is generally much quicker.

I'm considering writing a short book, "Coding for Aspies". What do you think?

Programming takes a certain way of looking at things. But for me the trigger was exploration. Taking existing code, modifying it, seeing what happens, modifying again. Together with a good book or website this was for me okay.

I started with BASIC (like there was much else on my home computer). Just start with a mainstream language, which has good books or websites. That can be a great help.