I have several ideas to develop with Cardano but I’m hitting a roadblock with learning how to code with it.
I’m pretty frustrated with the lack of documentation out there. A lot of it is incomplete or doesn’t work anymore.
For example, I was using Cardanocli-js to run an NFT generating repository and it no longer works due to the Alonzo upgrade.
So I tried to do stuff in straight command line and also hit roadblocks where documentation no longer works.
I’m at a point where either someone will kindly steer me in the direction I need to be heading… or I’ll have to sell 6000 ADA and use a different platform like Solana or AVAX that’s more developer friendly.
I’m sure that I’m not the only one having this issue. I’d hate to see the Cardano platform hindered by these issues in the future
Hey, I understand your frustrations initially I had the same issue and didn’t like it. But slowly I grasped the idea of it.
Now first thing first, if you are trying to do anything with cardano try to run cardano-node and then use cardano-cli.
If you are going to use 3rd party tools like cardano-clijs, etc they will have their own issues.
Also in this you mentioned you are having issue with coding, now I’m not sure how experienced you are with that. So if you have previous coding experience and the frustration is just with the cardano, then yeah follow the above recommendations.
If you don’t have coding experience then maybe try to learn few things about python and then come back to this.
Also if you have any other problem, feel free to ask 
I agree with @falconfeast, first learn to use the cardano-cli. This is my main interface with cardano and it gets you started.
I learned a lot from it and the overall structure of the cardano network. I do not know what you are trying to build so its is a bit hard to guide you in the right direction. What I first did was to build bash scripts that use the cardano-cli to automated interactions with the cardano blockchain (send alot of transactions, mint/burning of tokens, sending metadata transactions and interacting with smart contracts). One can do alot with the cardano-cli.
If you are here to build dApps you also need to learn plutus, I myself am doing just that. To get started with this first learn Haskell (after you get the cardano-cli). Then one can use this knowledge to view the plutus pioneer lectures. I learned alot from them and especially lecture 6 in which a whole dApp is demonstrated from first principles (its a long video tho). From there I learned how to setup a working environment to developed and test plutus scripts using the haskell package builder cabal (this is all explained in the pioneer videos). Right now I am building simple plutus scripts and deploying them to the testnet.
Lastly it is also advisable to learn about the overall abstract stucture of the cardano network. Who is doing what and what information is transmitted when, how is this information parsed my nodes etc… For this I read all of the formal specifications of IOHK (they are on their website). Its a big pill to swallow but definitely worth it (just ignore the math bits, the text provides a good story of the overall).
I personally think the documentation is great, but it is somewhat cumbersome to find the right info if you do not know where to start. The cardano foundation is working on that, they launced a great platform not so long ago, see the website https://developers.cardano.org/.
Good luck and if you have any questions, just ask We are all glad to help each other out!
2 Likes
Functional programming is definitely more popular in academia and amongst mathematicians like Charles Hoskinson.
Outside of academia:
Most programmers do not use functional paradigm
99% of programmers never use Haskell
How many use Plutus?
I would wager a few hundred have really tried learning it outside of the core team and contributors. A few thousand have dabbled like me and then put it back on a shelf for later.
That’s an extremely small potential pool of Cardano smart contract developers in the making. That said you could argue that climbing that learning cliff might be worth it as you could literally be one of few at the top 
Great advice. I appreciate it!
I’m still debating whether to learn Haskell or work with Solana…
There is something I like about working with Cardano though, I can’t put my finger on it…