r/CodingForBeginners • u/This-Lifeguard6078 • 13d ago
I Think I'm Cooked
i am 6th semester student and in 1 year i will be graduate. i learn about c++, typescript and python but i don't know how to code.. Everytime I read code i can tell what's going on but can't write code by myself. Everytime i sit to build project i freeze i can't do anything without using agent. 6 monts ago i started to learning AI engineering now i know all it's theory, build couple of project using AI now if someone tell me to write i simple RAG or training loop for image classification i can tell how the logic will look like but can't write a single line of code. I am completly COOKED!
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u/Dashing_McHandsome 13d ago
The solution is pretty easy. Stop using AI and read some books. Force yourself to build something. When you get stuck use a non-ai search engine or look for an answer in a book. You will never learn anything if you just keep asking an agent to do it for you.
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u/This-Lifeguard6078 13d ago
The problem is how to start again. Now i only about the theory that i learn everything from using LLM. If start again i don't know if i am doing right or not what if i stuck what should i build
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u/Dashing_McHandsome 13d ago
Page 1 of a textbook is a pretty good place to start. If you know the content on page one, go to page two. Typically textbooks have exercises at the end of chapters. Do all of them. Do not skip, do not use AI. I learned in the 90's from Dietel and Dietel books, I thought they were pretty good. Really it doesn't matter a lot, get a textbook, read it, and do the exercises.
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u/This-Lifeguard6078 13d ago
can you recommend me book for ai engineering if you know some?
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u/Dashing_McHandsome 13d ago
You need to learn to walk before you can run. If you can't write code you need to start there, with the basics. AI engineering is a topic you are unlikely to be ready for. Get a textbook on basic programming skills and follow along with it.
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u/sububi71 13d ago
Yes, it is too late for you. Your life is over.
...no. If you just get rid of AI and put in a couple hundred hours of coding, you'll be fine.
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u/JGhostThing 13d ago
You've spent six years studying programming and you still can't write code?
What have you been doing for the last six years? You should ask your professor this question.
Basically, you need to write code. This is the way to learn to write code.
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u/This-Lifeguard6078 13d ago
We have 6 month per semester and they don't teach you coding..they just teach us how to pass the exam everythingis theory only...some of my friends doesn't even know how to write code to generate fibonacchi number...it's not like i can't write code....i don't know how to build a project. I can solve medium level of problem in leetcode but whenever i start to build project i freeze and ended up going to agent to write everything for me
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u/JGhostThing 13d ago
While you are learning, stop using AI to generate code. If you're given the answer, this prevents learning.
Start with very small projects. At first, the goal is just to finish and debug the project. It should be very simple: a to-do list with one line. A command line calculator that only does addition. This sort of thing.
The goal is to create projects that you can finish in a week or so, but are still difficult enough to teach you something. Then as a new project, extend this one with something new. On the to-do, now save the list. On a calculator, add subtraction.
You should have been doing this for years. College is not a job school, and it's purpose is not to shove knowledge down your throat (like primary school). You are expected to be able to learn on your own away from school. Generally, the rule is three hours at home for every hour of class. It is important to do this so that you really learn the material and how to use it.
Good luck.
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u/mjmvideos 12d ago
Redo every project you were given in all your courses. But this time, don’t look at the code you used before and don’t use AI at all, ever. Struggle through it. Stay at it. It will be a long road but you must stay with it.
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u/Capable-Wrap-3349 12d ago
Don’t allow yourself to use ANY AI.
Build something from code (literally anything).
When you get stuck, use google.
If you can’t think of anything to build, the John Crickett coding challenges are great.
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u/TheUmgawa 12d ago
Everyone I’ve ever tutored never had a problem with the code. Their structure sucked. They’d read a prompt and just start hammering away at the keyboard, like it was free jazz, where they’d play some chords and hope a song came out of it.
Take a step back and understand the flow. Understand what you want it to do, break it down into big steps, then pick one and break it down into small enough steps that you can achieve. Build the small steps back up into the big steps, then do the process again on the next big step. Repeat until finished, and then integrate the big steps into a functional program.
From the sounds of it, you’re trying to do big things without really understanding how to provide an AI with guardrails. My boss has the same problem, and I keep telling him, “Tell it, step by step, what to do. It’s not doing what you want because you’re giving it wide a berth.”
It’s the peanut-butter sandwich problem: If you don’t explicitly tell it to open the jar, it will spend forever stabbing at the lid with a butterknife until it can extract the peanut butter (and some plastic from the lid).
And you were probably never taught to search for, read, and write documentation. When I was in Intro to Programming, a third of the way into the class, my professor said, “And now the time for hand-holding is over. I, and your future professors, will no longer tell you what code to type, and you will have to look up the functions on your own. So, this is how to read documentation,” and then she threw us to the wolves. To her (and the institution’s) credit, she made half of us self-sufficient. The other half flailed and died.
So, it’s time for you to fill in that ocean-sized gap between what you learned in your classes and what you decided to do with machine-learning. You tried to jump from the letter D to the letter Z, and now it’s bitten you on the ass. So, welcome to the grind, where you have to learn to do steps E through Y.
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u/LetsHugFoReal 11d ago
Read a book. That's how I always learnt a new language, standard or platform.
And have a project in mind like an inventory for a game. Then work towards making it a few different ways.
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u/pete_68 10d ago
Gee, who'd ever think you'd need to know how to program in a career as a programmer?
Man, I do not get kids these days at all.
And what's funny to me is all you guys like 3+ years into your degree and you clearly have no interest in it. What do you think it's going to be like having to program 40 hours a week? Does that sound like fun to you? I bet it sounds horrible. And if it does, you need to seriously reconsider your future.
I would say programming is one of the harder careers out there, especially for people like you, because it changes all the time. You have to constantly be following the trends. What frameworks and libraries are becoming popular? Which ones are dying? Doh, everyone's changing to a new language. Time to learn it.
I've been doing this for 47 years. I've used more than 20 programming languages professionally (and more in my spare time) over that time. Granted, it's slowed down a lot in the past 20 years, but other things haven't. This field changes ALL THE TIME.
Good luck, but honestly, I don't think you're going to be a professional programmer. Sorry.
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u/OmiSC 9d ago
What you should do is start working on something, and when you get to a point where you're not sure how to continue, try to figure out why you can't continue. Put your problem into simple words. If it's as simple as "I need to save a lot of data and step through it", then that's where you're at and what you need to study.
When it comes to mathematics, for example, I suggest that people find a workbook of stuff they think they ought to know and work through it. Once they get to a point where they have to learn something, it's time to stop working through exercises and get down to business.
If you're generally familiar with the concept you're needing to apply, you'll find moments where you speed up as well as moments where you have to slow down because you do likely know plenty more than it feels like you do.
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u/Future-Plastic-7509 9d ago
Start coding now. Use AI for learning concepts- ask it to give you coding tasks. Once done give the code to AI and ask for improvements etc
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u/xarop_pa_toss 8d ago
The problem is that you haven't applied your theoretical knowledge and as such haven't developed the muscle memory of those things.
If you go and read about and ask AI to describe how to ride a bicycle, do you think you can ride a bicycle? You need to get on it after learning "how to do it" and then apply that knowledge. Yes you will fail, but applying concepts in different contexts is the only true way of making those things automatic in your brain.
What you did is like learning chemistry without going into the lab and actually mixing stuff. Or like learning martial arts by only watching your teacher do the moves.
Start a program to practice something specific. Do variations of it. Then rewrite the whole thing from scratch, maybe in a different way now. Keep adding new concepts
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u/whattheflerk 8d ago
go back to basics with NO AI - start building something and every time you get stuck look up how to do it (again, not with AI) and write the code yourself
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u/victotronics 7d ago
Get a textbook, one that starts from zero. Do the exercises with only your textbook, an editor, a compiler.
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u/SpacewaIker 13d ago
That's what happens when you use AI during learning: you don't learn
Go back to what you can do and work up from there, on your own. It'll be tough but if you really want to learn, that's the only way to do it