If you want something a little more fresh, I’d maybe avoid Arch as your first go and try openSUSE Tumbleweed. It strikes a balance between bleeding edge and stable (they call it “leading edge” I believe). Everything is tested before release and isn’t too stale like Ubuntu/Debian flavors. I personally like KDE for the desktop environment but the installer lets you choose.

If you want to stick with Ubuntu or something similar, I’d recommend Linux Mint. I used it before switching to openSUSE.

Most options should be dual boot friendly but I’d recommend installing Windows first to avoid bootloader issues.

You could try GymRoutines: https://codeberg.org/noahjutz/GymRoutines

Is this with your own code or someone else’s? It’s always harder to understand someone else’s code (at least at first). Everyone thinks and writes in a different way.

In either case, I think you could benefit from stepping through the code in a debugger. Depending on what the code is, give some data as input where you know/can guess what the output is. Using the debugger, step through each line to see what happens to the data. It can help break down long or complicated functions into simpler chunks.

Recognition of functions or snippets of code will come through repetition and exposure. Writing code helps more than reading as well. Even with all of that, it’s still okay and common to have to look things up or review. I constantly have to check the syntax of C++ library functions, like snprintf, which I have used but not enough to memorize (and that’s okay). Don’t be discouraged. I’ve been in my career for 11 years now, around 9 of which is working with embedded C++, and I still feel like an imposter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTjBrsGgkA0

NewPipe still seems to work for me.