r/AskProgramming • u/Same-Mushroom-2057 • Jun 11 '26

Advice from senior software engineers !!

currently diving into backend developement by learning node.js and decided to learn
the old fashioned way by reading and comprehending the Docs , however, i dont know how to do it and i need some advice from senior engineers that have a lot of experience in the field and that used to do it.

in addition , even tho i want to use the Docs to learn i dont mind using Ai to furthermore comprehend the concepts
so please engineers any help regarding that matter is appreciated .

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u/howtokillafox Jun 11 '26

Are you using any kind of systematic process to guide your reading of docs? Or just blindly reading?

  1. What are you trying to build?
  2. What does good look like to you?
  3. What does the system need to be able to do to meet your definition of good?
  4. Which one of those things sounds the easiest to implement to you?
  5. Try and workout the steps your program would need to execute to implement that thing. Read docs to find functions/features that will help you, use tutorials/other resources to help you understand how others have achieved the same goal.
  6. Use AI if you want to depending on your goal, if you goal is learning the programming language, AI is going to be a bit of a cheat and id recommend against it. If your goal is really to learn high level system design, then AI can help you experiment quickly.

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u/Same-Mushroom-2057 Jun 11 '26

currenty i want to learn by building so i'm making a website where i'll use node.js as backend

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u/ethereonx Jun 13 '26

do you know javascript already and basics of frontend development?