Hey! I am Mist, a new Roblox scripter. I have some questions.
- What should I focus on learning?
- Is there a better way to script? Format, organization, etc?
- How long should it take with good consistency?
Thanks to the people who did help me out here!
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Hey, welcome to the community! These are great questions you’re asking.
To answer your first question, I think you should focus on watching some basic Lua tutorials on YouTube. There’s a whole slew of stuff to watch in order to kick start the learning process.
In terms of HOW we script, I think it comes down to preference. You just have to program a bunch and find a format which suits you the best. If you ever work in a team, it’s also good to consider their opinions as well.
For the last one, I am assuming you mean how long it should take to learn. There’s no real solid answer to that, because it varies from person to person. If you already know a programming language, it could take only a few months to really catch on. If you don’t, it could take a year or longer to get really familiar with the API and language itself. It all boils down to how much time you spend coding.
To finish off, I just want to say that in the beginning, you shouldn’t be learning to code for money, because that won’t happen for a while. Instead, learn to code because you’re passionate about it!
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Start off with YT videos, tutorials, and courses. A really nice course to get you started is Studio+. It covers beginner, intermediate, and advanced scripting, game design, and building/modeling. It’s fairly easy to follow along and will give you a HUGE jumpstart in Roblox Lua.
Set small goals and achieve them. For example, set a small goal to learn more about value types and variables. Once you accomplish that, move onto the next thing. Setting massive goals may get you dissuaded and make you feel overwhelmed.
This is very cliche, but practice. I cannot stress enough how important it is to practice. To elaborate, make random games and passion projects for fun in your spare time.
Whenever you run into a problem with a feature you’re looking to implement, find videos online, check on forums, and look in the Roblox API for answers.
If you cannot already find your answer online, try asking here on the dev forum, or other places likes StackOverflow or ScriptingHelpers.
If you only practiced once every other day or so, you could expect to become intermediate in 3 - 4 months. From intermediate to advanced, it is a bit harder, so expect to be scripting for a year or maybe even 2 to become fully professional.
If anytime during this period of learning that you feel that Roblox Lua isn’t for you, it’s okay for you to take a break or to switch to a different language.
Remember, you have a whole life ahead of you to try new things. Once you start a language, it isn’t permanent, and you can always switch to another one whenever you like.
A good programmer has an assortment of languages in their toolbox, so get used to trying new languages; once you learn one, every other language will be much easier to master.
I hope this aids you in your programming journey.
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Thanks! This answered my questions very well
That is a really great question. First, start off learning the basics of Lua.
Don’t aim too high, but don’t aim too low. Always remember, Rome was not built in a day, it is a very time consuming thing to learn a programming language. Look at community tutorials in the dev forum, and on some YouTube videos. There are a few things that every programmer should specialize in:
- Metatables
- OOP
- CFrames
- Functions
- Mathematical functions (
math.clamp(),math.floor(), etc).
It is always good to have a background understanding of advanced mathematics and programming (if not it is still okay) and very useful to understand:
- Trigonometry (Sine, Cosine, Tangent, Inverse Sine, Inverse Cosine, etc)
- Structure of a code
- Experience with simple websites like Scratch
As I noted, those are very optional but very good to understand.
Good luck 
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