Tell us a bit about Your coding skills

OK.. not a novice...

Download one of the flavors of LDmicro.
Classic2.3 a nice working albeit not as fully optioned version.
The latest direct progeny of 2.3 is a versio 4.4 i seem to recall working in the same fashion as 2.3 a fully graphical selfcontained programing environment.
And the very latest albeit somewhat different version 5.something .

Download and install. Each version has a specific method.
2.3 and 4.4 essentially download and unzip intoa subdirectory. Run the executable LDmicro.exe and you are in the programing environment.
All functionalities are found in the drop down menus.

As far as the ladder diagram programing is concerned... you can download the turial and play withit to get the gist of the programing method.

I have not used version 5.something soi a can not make any comments other than it apears to be similar to 4.4 but caters to ARM processor and implements some of the functionalities not as a black box but rather as C library the main graphical program calls up
You may find it interesting.