Should I just jump to v2 or stay onto v1?

[djjunko]

I've been trying to learn a lot of languages, I'm watching autohotey tutorials and most of them are in v1, there's udemy courses on v1, I got the v1 syntax instructions added to my bookmarks for when I was confident enough in the one language I was learning to go back to it when I was ready.

I know a little here and there about v1, but is v1 and v2 that different? like if I watched the tutorials in v1 and made stuff, would it be kind of pointless since v2 is the new?? or are they not that different? just want peoples opinion's


Sorry if what I'm saying is confusing.

[andymbody]

I recommend learning v2. Why? Because v1 syntax is very inconsistent (one of the main reasons for the decision to development v2). If you learn it, you will eventually be forced to unlearn it to stay current. It would be like learning to use Win95, then switching to Win11. I would imagine that support for AHKv1 will dwindle at some point. And I think that language support/updates has already been discontinued. Might as well learn AHKv2 to avoid the hassles later of un-learning AHKv1 (inconsistent) syntax.

Another major disadvantage of v1 is that it will not tell you if something is wrong with your code. It will just remain quiet, and give you no indicating as to why the code simply does not work. V2 is less forgiving up front and will alert you of syntax issues that may cause trouble before it will even run the code. This may sound like a hassle, but it will save hours of debugging throughout the life of the project development.

Yes, there are enough differences to warrant starting with v2, rather than v1. Watching v1 tutorials may lead to learning habits that cannot be ported to v2. There are also so many different acceptable syntaxes in v1 that each tutorial might present a different syntax to do the same thing. Which can get very confusing.

This forum and the docs can help get you up to speed with v2, even tho the tutorials are currently out of balance between the two versions right now (the number of [visual] v2 tutorials may not catch up to that of v1 for some time).

Andy

[DuckingQuack]

I agree with andy.

Since you say you are already learning coding languages, then reading and writing v2 will come naturally. Honestly, I believe it's a no brainer to go with v2, because like andy mentioned, future support for v1 is going out the door.
v2 is great and continuously improving.