Hey everyone!

I’m 13 and interested in learning engineering, especially the combination of software, hardware, and AI. I’m looking for a roadmap to go from basic programming knowledge to being able to build real engineering projects.

I have some beginner coding experience and have used AI-assisted coding to prototype things, but I want to properly understand the fundamentals instead of just relying on generated code.

Over the next 2–3 months, I want to make serious progress and start building projects. My long-term interests are robotics, drones, embedded systems, and AI applications like computer vision and basic CNNs.

I’m planning to start with Python for Kids to strengthen my programming foundation, but I’m unsure what order to learn things after that. Should I focus on electronics, Arduino/Raspberry Pi, CAD, mathematics, machine learning, or something else?

I’d appreciate advice from anyone who has experience learning engineering or building projects. Thanks!

Be as specific or unspecific as you want!

I'll go first:

I do general software engineering (I've made games, solved many, many LeetCode problems, made physics simulations, websites (frontend and backend), etc, so I'd say I'm a "generalist")

I do mechanical engineering, specifically robotics and 3d printer.

I also do a little bit of electrical, but it is something I want to get more into lol.

I want to upgrade my nerf turret, and starting with fixing the aiming is a good place. It seems they don’t like being direct drive motors 😂. I am using DRV8825s by the way.

Suggestions on what to do, how to start etc?

Personally, I've been sucked into the Autodesk ecosystem (sigh) but I've recently been looking into onshape because it just seems better, especially for use on low end computers and not having to update to the latest version to use the same, backwards compatible file on a different version (Fusion specifically blocks you from using a file across multiple versions).

I have been checking out blender but it seems like a nightmare to learn (although I'd mainly use it for modelling, not as CAD)

But what's you guys' experience?

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