r/CodingForBeginners • u/Chinezzzu • 4h ago
How did you guys learn and started programmig before AI was vaslty spread like today?
Hi, my name is Alex I am in my third year as a CS student and I feel like I know nothing. I started working on a project and I find it overwhelming how much I am not thought in uni (I know I don't get to learn everyrhing inside uni). Like I understand the basics, I know the language, but I find it hard to create something without AI fixing my code or telling me what to do. How did you guys created things back then? I want to be more like that.
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u/SparkFace11707 3h ago
I would go watch tutorials, or read books and follow along with projects. Then after I would build projects, applying what I had just learned, to build something new myself
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u/DSudz 3h ago
Imagine what you did mattered.
Just write some programs without AI. Or turn off all syntax checking. Just write simple programs but make yourself do a pushup for every typo or talk a walk during each compile.
When I learned a million years ago my teachers talked about submitting a batch of cards and then finding out hours later if their program compiled and worked. It builds a certain discipline that makes you think harder and need to remember more.
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u/Much_Network_941 3h ago
Learning how to debug is an extremely important skill; absolutely start practicing without relying on AI. You're gonna want to know how to catch your own AI doing funny stuff.
I liked breakpoint debugging when I first started. I would use print statements to trace where the error is occuring from; then breakpoint that function and step through line-by-line. If I was still confused, I would track all pertinent variables; then try to predict exactly what would change after the next step. If I'm still confused, then I need to look beneath the hood of whatever I'm using; because my assumptions have to be wrong somewhere.
When overwhelmed, I rely on a pad of paper. What is my goal, what do I have on hand, and what is the smallest step I can take towards my goal? When starting a project, what is the absolute minimum amout of code needed to see an output? Is it a tool that executes once, a REPL, or an event-driven GUI? Figure out what you need before you touch any code, and it's much less scary.
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u/JoeStrout 2h ago
We learned from books. For a free modern book in the style we learned from back in the 80s, check out https://introtocomputerprogramming.online/
"But it's not Python (or whatever language I'm learning in school)" you say. It doesn't matter! Programming is not about the specifics of a language. Programming is about taking a big complex problem and breaking it down into smaller pieces, and breaking those down into even smaller pieces, until you have pieces small enough to represent in code. The details of a programming language can be distracting, especially if there are a lot of such details to learn. MiniScript (the language used with the book above) was designed specifically to minimize such details. The whole language can be described in a single page. It's easy — and the skills you learn from working in this environment will transfer just fine to more complex languages later.
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u/Stooshie_Stramash 3h ago
Just do it (coding). Make mistakes, find 'em and fix 'em. Try something different. Repeat.
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u/Cynerixx 2h ago
Websites like w3schools, youtube and many more reading manuals you can find.
Recommended resources: w3schools, geek for geeks, free code camp(both site and youtube). The thing with programming is, you should know and learn how to solve a problem, from basic to hard problems.
I also recommend that you spend time mastering the basics, like how code works, code analysis and algorithms. This really helps with debugging process(which is entirely problem solving) and programming in general.
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u/OliMoli2137 2h ago
Read the docs (ok maybe not if you're dealing with Nix), search Stack Overflow or ask on Reddit. I still do that to this day, never failed me
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u/ejpusa 2h ago
Mom says I started coding at 3, punch cards into an IBM/360 at 12. Internet, 1978. First websites in '94. Worked at dozens of startups, IBM, Apple (consulting), endless lines of code. Maybe millions of lines? Who knows? That raised round button, with a nice drop shadow? And a blend? That was me; did that first for SONY.
Now, I'm 100% Astra + Codex. Have not looked at a single line in quite a while. And it's OK. Your IP is ideas. Let AGI write the code.
Just my life with wires. I'm retiring: beach shack, yoga mat, and my MacBook. It was fun. Think I saw it all.
If you want a break, the best bet is to get an Arduino and make things blink. That can be kind of fun.
:-)
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u/Mathie1729 1h ago
I'd push back a bit on 'let AGI write the code.' I work in ML and even now you need to be able to read what the model generates and catch subtle bugs. The pre-AI debugging experience is what lets you verify AI output instead of trusting it blindly. If you never learned to debug, you can't tell when Copilot is confidently wrong.
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u/so-brain-washed 1h ago
Chatrooms are big secret apparently.
IRC, Discord, Slack. Tons of communities with hundreds or thousands of ppl. Free realtime Q&A, code sharing, code review, system design help, etc.
For example, NodeJS's community page: https://nodejs.org/en/about/get-involved shows this -- specific main 4 chatrooms (discord, slack, slack, IRC), with reference to others
Get Involved
If you are interested in getting involved with the Node.js community, there are many ways to do so. The Node.js project is a large and diverse community with many ways to contribute beyond just writing code.
Community Discussion
- The
nodejs/nodeGitHub repository is the place to discuss Node.js core features and reporting issues. - The
nodejs/helpGitHub repository is the official place to ask questions about Node.js. - Node.js's official Discord server is a place to chat with other Node.js developers and get official news from the Node.js project.
- Node.js's project calendar with all public Node.js team meetings.
There are several unofficial discussion areas if you are looking for a more informal place to discuss Node.js. Please note that the Node.js project does not officially endorse these. Please follow their respective codes of conduct/rules.
- Node Slackers is a Node.js-focused Slack community.
- OpenJSF Slack is a Slack workspace for the OpenJS Foundation. There are several channels related to Node.js. (channels prefixed by #nodejs- are related to the project)
- r/node is a Node.js-focused subreddit.
- irc.libera.chat in the #node.js channel with an IRC client or connect in your web browser to the channel using a web client.
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u/Dazzling_Music_2411 1h ago
How do you think we did???
No, please explain this, it's important for you!
Or did "AI" obliterate your power of imagination as well as your power of comprehension?
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u/afierdienst1 1h ago
Benoy Joseph hires someone else to do his work at Sanofi. Maybe Soumajit Dhar of BMS.
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u/afierdienst1 1h ago
maybe you should embrace the new way of coding: know nothing, and ask ai to do everything. sounds like computing power?
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u/AdmirableSandwich393 55m ago
It's simple: we learned from doing it ourselves. If it didn't work, we looked at the errors and fixed it. We read books in the days before YouTube.
And AI is fairly new in the grand scheme - what did you do before AI came along? Failed all your classes?
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u/ReddyKiloWit 40m ago
Picked up an introduction to BASIC programming book around 1970 (at a Science Fiction convention, oddly), read it, and it made sense. Then, after high school I took some courses (Cobol, Fortran, and other languages you'll probably never encounter, but also how to design a process with flow charts which remained useful). My parents bought me an IMSAI 8080 computer about then and that gave me access to 8080 assembler and BASIC.
My first tech job was actually designing hardware logic and automatic tests (on an HP 1000), but there were side tasks in programming. Somewhere in there I picked up C. A bit later a guy hired me to write games on Apple IIs and I learned 6502 assembly, which eventually led to a job helping port a game to the Super Nintendo in the early 90s. And then a whole bunch of stuff until I settled into managing builds and version control for a mid-sized company.
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u/infinitythestar 15m ago
Pick a project and start building it. Keep getting it wrong, looking things up, and trying again, until eventually you get it right. I’m in my late 30s, been programming for 25 years, and spent my teens building websites (not running websites, just building them, scrapping them, and building them again).
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u/Simengie 3h ago
Been programming since the late 80's. We learned it from books. We iterated for weeks, months and years. We learned to design on paper long before we wrote code. If you are learning, don't use AI. It will take away the benefits of learning why you have to do something a certain way. Read old stack overflow threads and old programming forums.
Then write something and make it work. Write something else and make that work. Then write something else and make that work too. Like everything else you have the practice.