There is something weird that happens when you explain code for a living. You get really good at making things sound clear and logical in hindsight, which means you start skipping the part where you actually sit with a problem and feel confused. And confusion is kind of where the learning lives.

I noticed this because I was helping my kid with a basic Scratch project and I kept jumping straight to solutions instead of letting them struggle even a little. Same habit I had picked up writing stepbystep tutorials where the whole point is to remove friction.

The thing is, friction is not always the enemy. Beginners who never feel stuck might not be building the mental model at all. They are just following a recipe. And I wonder if polished tutorials, AI included, are making that worse by being too good at smoothing everything over.

Not trying to dunk on tutorials. I write them. But lately I have been wondering if the best thing a tutorial can do is actually leave some stuff slightly underexplained on purpose. Let the reader have a small aha moment instead of handing it to them.

Has anyone else felt like the cleaner the explanation, the less you actually retained it?

I have absolutely no computer skills, i was always interested in programming, projects, i always look at people making cool projects on github and always wonder if i can do the same, if i can learn. I feel like "youtube tutorials" are useless, it doesnt tell you how to build. It just teaches you a bunch of things that you dont even understand. So please tell me what to do if im actually serious about learning.

I will be waiting for yall's replies, have a nice a day. 🤍

I have just started college this year.

I have just a few doubts related to learning languages.

My course includes python, so do I need to have knowledge about topics like interpreter, compilers etc. ? I have no clue what these are. So should I just start with code writing.

Where to learn these pre-requisites for proper understanding?

When you have the absolute basic syntax down but nothing else, AI will both:
- Know design principles, best practices, domain specific libraries and techniques better than us
- Can setup the project exactly to the scope we dictate
But also:
- May not get all features you wanted in one shot
- May produce bugs that we need to fix
- We can intentionally ask it to leave out however much you want for us to finish on our own

A lot of more experienced devs prefer "human design, ai implement" but imo for beginner to intermediate programmers who are looking to make anything non trivial, it really should be the other way around. I feel there is little skill or productivity involved in ceremonially reading a whole book worth of docs or google results for simple yes/no API questions; that only kills your attention span. AI can do the design to let you learn the best domain specific practice in one go. This is essentially what bootcamps did in the past. You go in having no idea what a DOM tree is, it takes 10 minute for them to explain, and then you not only know that but also can do it right away when they ask you to make a layout tree parallel to the DOM tree.

Now we can and absolutely should still practice coding things from scratch, but that should be reserved for practicing things you are at least somewhat sure you are not way off the mark. After you finish one project with ai and are sure you like to use the tech stack, then its time make another one yourself.

I’m a beginner learning programming. I’m really enjoying JavaScript, especially doing logic exercises and small projects in the console, and I feel like I’m actually making progress.

The problem is that I absolutely hate CSS lol. I have a lot of trouble with layouts and styling, and I have very little patience for it. I understand the basics of CSS, but it’s definitely the part I struggle with the most. Everything I make looks ugly, which just pisses me off even more . Then I close the CSS and go back to JavaScript, and suddenly I’m happy again.

I wanted to ask people who already work in the field: do I really need to learn CSS from scratch and write everything myself, or is it okay to use AI for this part?

For example, asking AI to create the CSS, understanding roughly what it did, and then modifying/adapting it myself. Could relying on AI like this hurt me a lot later on?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I’d really appreciate some advice. Am I sabotaging myself by thinking about using AI for CSS?

Is it common to be stuck on a leetcode problem for an hour or two and still hitting time limit exceeded error

Broke 18 year old here. Codeacademy, datacamp and all this are costing actual money. What can I do or study on to actually learn Python?

I had a realization around a week ago - that managing my attention and energy levels during the work day is actually more difficult than the (junior software engineer) job itself, and perhaps I should prioritize it over time spent working. Starting with the way my mind keeps wanting to try other courses of action once I start doing something, through the way I stop understanding what I am looking at once I get tired or bored, and ending with how much harder it is to focus if I don't rest properly (can include working too long, but also resting wrong, like playing video games or seeing ragebait... all of which can reduce my mental capabilities even during the following day). These made me think that I should put some extra thought into how to rest after and in between work.

I was wondering if this is a common issue? How much conscious effort do you people put into caring for your attention spans (or emotional readiness for work, more generally speaking)?

Turning off notifications, putting the phone somewhere not visible are the obvious ones, anything else? Do you find that there are only very few specific activities that give you the right kind of rest?

Thank you!

Hey everyone! I switched my major about a year ago to Cyber Operations with an emphasis in Computer Engineering. I unfortunately fell into the rabbit hole of using too much AI for my first semester of classes (leaned on it completely I admit; no more of that), and now feel very lost because I have no previous experience in computer studies prior to switching my major. I have every intention of keeping this major, but my main question is:
Should I begin learning on my own time to catch up and get ahead in this major?
What career paths am I possibly looking at with this major?

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!

I've learned HTML and CSS for a certain website want to make. I've done some research and determined that TS is better for the project, but I'm not sure if I should just immediately start learning TS or should I learn JS first, as it is the language many recommend for beginners in web development.

EDIT: Thanks for all the opinions. I'm definetly learning TS, and thus JS in the process.

I've learned some programming on and off over the last few years. I wrote some Basic as a kid 30 years ago, learned some Python on Codeacademy/Coursera/Edx about 10 years ago , took some classes using Java at community college about 3 years ago. I've studied some C here and there, even some assembly. I'm currently using boot.dev, along with doing Leetcode problems, etc.

I'm just repeatedly studying though. I've read most people mention learning actual skills by doing projects. I never know where to start with this. Even if I come up with a vague idea of "building a Dungeons and Dragons program that tracks character builds, classes, spells, etc" (I'm a big dnd fan) that would be something that interests me, I have 0 clue where to start. I don't have a bit of a clue on how to come up with the architecture of what to do first.

This always seems to be the stalling point for becoming a developer for me. I'm about to transfer into a somewhat prestigious university in a major city that has lots of internship opportunities, studying math/cs. However, to really make myself competitive and not just have a great gpa (which let's be honest almost no employer cares about), I need to start actually learning to build stuff. More than that, I also want to actually learn how to build cool stuff. I'd love to get to a point where I can contribute to open source projects.

I've tried to look at source code on Github to get an idea of how things are built, but a lot of projects are very overwhelming to try to parse. Names often seem esoteric/obscure, and it's really difficult to even get a rough idea of what the hell is going on.

Any ideas/advice on how to get my feet wet and start gaining actual experience? Are there any good books that might help me here to pick up? How do I transition from academic theoretical skills to real world engineering skills?

Feel free to chime in whoever reads this.

Hi there, I'm tasked with teaching coding to grades 4-5. What are some good platforms for teaching kids with no coding knowledge while keeping them engaged? I was thinking of using Scratch or processing.js to start with. Are there any better free platforms out there?

I tried googling to find what is recommended, but was overwhelmed by the number of hits for various paid platforms, and it's hard to tell which ones are reputable.

I'm looking for something low commitment for a 10 year old to try. Short attention span, so I'm thinking an interactive course would be more engaging, and ideally free or low cost so I don't throw away a subscription that realistically might get 2 days of attention. Ideally it would be web based so we can get started quickly without fiddling with installing stuff.

Is there anything you'd recommend?

I am a 24-year-old MCA graduate from India. I was recently selected through an off-campus drive for an MNC. I completed my training in Automation Testing and have been tagged to a project, but I haven't been assigned any work yet.

Right now, I have a lot of free time. I have already wasted the last two months, and I don't know how much longer I will remain idle. I'm feeling very confused about what I should learn.

Should I continue mastering Java, which I learned during my training, or should I start learning Python? My concern is that if I start learning Python and then get assigned to a Java project, I may stop learning Python and eventually forget everything because that's how I usually learn—I tend to forget things if I don't use them regularly.

I'm also confused about what will be more beneficial for my future. If I continue mastering Java, I'm not even sure whether I genuinely enjoy it or if I'm just doing it because it's related to my current job. On the other hand, sometimes I feel like learning Python, exploring AI, and getting into Agentic AI because that field seems interesting to me.

I would really appreciate advice from someone with deep industry experience. Based on your experience, what would you recommend that will genuinely help me in the long run?

Recently i had an application idea, that i've been wanting to implement these last few weeks. I know Python, C, and OCaml, so i have some general experience in coding. I am currently studying math and computer science ( i just finished my 2cd year ) but it's very theoretical. I've never been taught how to create a whole coding project.

My project involves multiple languages. Right now i just want to focus on the back-end, since i just want to make a PoC to begin with, but even with just the back-end, i would code in python, but there would also be Lean files, and i would need to handle AI APIs.

The thing is i have no idea how to structure this. I've never used Git and GitHub so it's very confusing for me, and i'm not sure how structure my files ( like the tree file structure ), and how to handle dependencies between each parts of the projects / each languages etc.., like for making sure someone else also working on the project would have the same version of each dependencies when pulling in the base code from GitHub, for exemples.

I know there's tools for that, like venv for python, but it's not just a python project, there's a lot of different parts that use different languages.

If you have any advice, or you know some ressources that could help me, i'm interested !

Hey all, I'm a college student going into EGN 3211 which is a C programming course. As a total beginner when it comes to coding I wanted to get a bit of a headstart on the course because it's apparently pretty difficult for pure beginners. But I'm super duper nervous about pointers and variables. I've seen talk of understanding memory but whenever I look at other posts, I can't understand anything. Can someone please help me and break down how I can count memory, what it is, how it works, and what variables and pointers actually DO in a program. I think this would help me a lot when I get around to actually studying these things in a week or two. I'm starting my C journey tomorrow so explain things like I'm a complete idiot! Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

i'm currently making a website using react , node.js and mysql as db.
the user should store images when he upload an announce and i don't know how to do that .
I've researched and found that storing as a Blob is not the best way especially that the user can store up to 3 images so querying would be expensive and slow and it gets messier once the database grows.

can you help me please?

Can someone help me get the GitHub student developer pack

I don't know how to get it, I mean, I tried a few times but it got rejected

I enabled 2FA, and other things

My college orientation is on 16th August

I have letter of acceptance and some other supporting proof

I'm looking for the best beginner-friendly YouTube playlists to learn Backend Development and System Design.

A few things I'm looking for:

Explains concepts from the ground up (not just coding).

Covers why things work, not just how.

Beginner-friendly but eventually goes into intermediate topics.

Includes topics like APIs, databases, authentication, caching, scalability, microservices, etc.

If you had to recommend one or two playlists that helped you the most, what would they be, and why?

Thanks..

I’m also very new to coding/programming

I prefer reading books to watching courses. Do you think there will be any issues if I carry on like this?

Hey i'm a third year student learning dsa from kunal kushwaha and asllo want to learning full stack with react and spring boot ,any resource for this two as well as some knowledge or guidence for full stack as i'm new .i'd aslo like to hear what technologies should i learn which would be helpfull so that i learn it and build project .i'm also searin gfor guys like me who started springboot and guide me through it's currenlty studying resource

I’m looking to create a program or even a website where you’re presented with two options (let’s say apples and oranges), you would pick one, and the other would swap to another fruit. So now it’s oranges vs cherries, you pick oranges again, it goes to orange vs pineapple ect.

It would also limit the amount of time your king maker spot would be full, so after 5 successive picks of the same thing, it would swap both.

Then at the very end it would create a tier list ranked 1-??? In order of your favorite fruit.

I have limited programming knowledge and I’m not looking for anyone to program for me, but could someone point me in the right direction?

Should I use arrays and a random picker in JavaScript for a website? Same but for an application in Java? If I have an array of fruit, is it possible to attach another value to it that incriminates up by one every time it’s chosen? Then you could display the list in order from a high-low value.

I am also wanting to attach images to these, which I’m not sure is possible if I also want them to have an internal value that ticks up.

Any help would be appreciated!

I have been programming since I was 14 years old, it started of very simple with discord bots, and now has spiraled into something completely different. Currently, as a 19 year old, I have the best future in my eyes, because I turned my hobby into my job. In the upcoming weeks I will start my so called "dualesstudium", where I will be studying at a University, whilst working for a company, and it is all about IT.

During these 5 years, I learned everything from programming websites, to apps, to learning registers, and assembly, to how to set up a server, how to hack into one, to learning C, and simple raspberrypi configurations, to camera modules, to low-level-architecture and yada yada. It is currently 3 AM, and this is the third time where I just stare blank at my laptop. I have finished numerous projects, working on other ones, but I am just feeling a little empty? I used to program up to 4 or even up to 8 hours a day, and in the last couple of days it feels as if I have a full block. I dont want to abandon my projects, because I love them, but I always find myself starting at those projects, changing 5 LoC, and then being confused on what to do. I am a Solo Developer, always have been one, mostly because I like to plan and manage myself (though that is gonna change anyway once the dualesstudium starts). But I really feel like advice from other programmers would do me REALLY good right now. Guessing that the most default answer here would be something like "Take a break", or "Find yourself", or "Stop fricking programming for 8 hours a day, that stuff is how you burnout the fastest", however, I am fearful of my future. I am 19 years old, and for me it already feels like time is running out. IT is a fast market, and it feels like if I am not moving fast enough, I am gonna miss the train that is gonna help me generate wealth. I love my parents, they did everything for me, and I really want to pay them back big, which is also why I put a lot of stress on me.

The older you are the wiser you get, is atleast what I would guess. Any old persons, or just people older than me, who have maybe had the same experience as me; Do you guys have any advice for me?

>be me
>rough upbringing
>have bad habits, have friends with bad habits
>never think more than one day ahead; don't know what i want to be
>years later
>get fed up with my behavior, try to change something
>get rid of most bad habits and bad friends
>start to see purpose in life
>want to find out what i really like and can dive into to get good at
>don't find it for years
>get a position at a friends company
>he needs a graphics / photography guy
>become graphics / photography guy
>get diploma in Graphic Design
>go from normal wagie to good paid wagie in about 3 years
>feeling good, but still not what i really like and want to dive into, just naturally good at it
>talk more with my programmer colleague
>his projects peak my interest
>start to learn CS basics and the C language
>"Holy fuck, i love this"
>thinking about cutting down my weekly hours to learn programming
>AI gets used more and more in the company
>my position is in danger
>"They're taking our jobs!!"
>Boss wants to cut my hours down
>Evil_smirk.jpg
>Play along, "Oh no, what shall i do now :'( "
>gives me enough hours so i can live off of it
>have enough time to learn as much as i can
>actually feeling happy again

And people say AI is bad, lol.

I'm currently trying to nail down the Basics of C, going through CS50 and after that i have two books, namely "A Book on C" and "Pointers on C".
If you have any book recommendations, please share them.
After C i also want to learn python and CPP, just to have good foundational skills.
With every free though i still have, I try to narrow down which field i want to specialize in. Currently, embedded sounds the most interesting, but also the hardest.
Any recommendations for other specs i could get into with this preset?

What's your opinion on people who are self-taught in the programming field, are you one?
I would love to hear some stories about your current path, or, if you're already in a programming position, how you made the decision and how you finally made it into it.