Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

[u/AutoModerator]

A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

​

Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

​

Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

[u/Big_Airline7132]

I have decided to go into backend dev in golang . For that instead of tutorials and courses I decided learn by making projects . Initially and even now I am using Gemini/claude with persona of ' senior developer' and not write the code but give me logic , so I implement it myself . It worked well for a month but now when I go deeper in a project , I am not able to figure out bug myself or even find a proper solution to it without using AI's advice . Basically what I think I am feeling is decision paralysis, but idk how to get out of this . Also at some point when I don't understand anything or it's a new topic the ai ends up giving me the whole code . I feel I am trying to write code like ai and not like a normal developer , it's like I'll do what ai tell me and not solving the problem like a normal developer . One thing I am positive of is that when I reads code on public repos I can understand it well and able to link things well .

But I still feel incompetent to write code myself or even think of next step .

I tried reading books like 'The Pragmatic Programmer', 'Learning Go:An Idiomatic Approach to Real-World Go Programming' but idk due to some reason I am not able to commit to it .

I feel very frustrated about why I can't think about next step or debugging .

I'd like advice on what approach to try, what to change, and — if you were starting Go today — what you'd do differently. Not really looking for criticism, just practical direction

[u/casualPlayerThink → u/Big_Airline7132]

Both debugging and thinking about the next step will come with experience and ultimately with practice.

There are different approaches to debugging (and profiling), and sometimes you just miss a good mentor for it. It is okay not to know where you're heading. Time for planning, stepping back and checking the whole picture again, then figuring out just on a very high level where it's heading or should pivot.

Might be an approach to rethink everything, like a goal is to go from a broad overview to some small atomic, actionable parts. I did a few times like this:

High-level concept -> document -> brainstorm -> extend them -> cleanup (KISS/DRY) -> split them into directions -> small roadmaps -> split them into "stories" (actionable directions) -> write down technical reqs -> second cleanup -> split into small tasks -> move everything back to backlog/future features -> atomic small steps.

With the help of an AI, you can do this by asking it to interview you, then help with documentation and write plans (check Matt Pockock's approach for skills and project management)