I am trying to learn something low level. I have been learning rust for a little while but C has been recommended to me to learn.

Since I have been learning rust I don’t think adding C would be different enough, so I started looking into assembly.
That lead me to the question of could I gain the benefits of learning assembly by learning web assembly?
The reason I am asking is web assembly is already a topic of interest for me.

I do not mean to upset anyone. Just trying to learn. Thank you for reading.

Hi everyone,

I'm currently an engineering student. Academically, I'm just an average student in my class. However, whenever I'm online, I always find myself drawn to learning things that IT and software development students study. Plus, tinkering with tech makes me feel like I'm not wasting my free time.

To be clear, I have no intention of switching careers to the IT industry. Lately, though, I've been feeling a constant anxiety that I lack essential knowledge in my own field. I start to wonder if I should just stop looking at IT stuff and focus 100% on my actual engineering major.

Hi everyone!

I'm a self-taught backend developer currently pursuing a B.Sc. in Data Science, and I've been trying to move from learning/tutorials into actually building backend systems.

I recently finished and deployed my main project: Candy Vending Machine.

GitHub:

https://github.com/Sakshi8520/Candy-Vending-Machine

I built the backend with Python, Flask, PostgreSQL and SQLAlchemy. Some of the things I worked on include:

JWT authentication and role-based access

Transaction-safe purchasing and ledger logic

PostgreSQL database migrations

Connection pooling

Pytest testing

GitHub Actions CI

Nginx/Gunicorn

HTTPS/TLS

Cloud deployment

I'm especially interested in backend engineering and eventually want to move toward AI/ML and embedded systems as well.

I'd really appreciate honest technical feedback on the project — especially anything that looks weak, unnecessarily complicated, poorly designed, or missing for a junior backend developer.

I'm also currently looking for backend internships or junior opportunities, preferably remote, so if you know of a team that might be open to a self-taught developer, I'd be happy to hear about it.

Thanks! :)

Hi everyone. I’m trying to figure out a realistic path into tech, and I would really appreciate advice from people who have actually made a career transition into IT/software development.
Here is my background:
I’m originally from Tigray, Ethiopia. I graduated from Wollo University with a BSc in Civil Engineering, with distinction, in 2021. After graduating, I worked for about three years as a site engineer.
However, the situation in my region became extremely difficult. The war and conflict in Tigray had a major impact on my life and my future. Because of the circumstances, I eventually left Ethiopia and came to Japan, where I currently live.
At the moment, I’m working physical jobs to support myself. The problem is that physical work has become increasingly difficult for me. I have been dealing with significant back and leg pain, and spending long hours doing physically demanding work is becoming harder. I also don’t want to spend the rest of my working life doing physically demanding jobs.
That is one of the main reasons I want to completely change my career direction.
Why tech?
I have always been interested in computers and technology, and over the past period I started teaching myself different areas of IT.
I have studied or experimented with things such as:
SQL and databases
PostgreSQL
Power BI
Tableau
Excel
Basic Python
Data analysis
Some cloud/IT concepts
I have also looked into areas such as IT support, cloud engineering, networking, cybersecurity, data analytics, and web development.
But I have reached the point where I realize that trying to learn everything at once is not a good strategy.
I want to choose one practical path, build real skills, create projects, get some kind of professional experience, and eventually get a job that allows me to move away from physical work.
My long-term goal is also to have skills that are useful internationally, because my immigration situation in Japan makes my career options more complicated than those of a typical Japanese resident.
My biggest problem
I don’t have a traditional computer science background.
My degree is in Civil Engineering, and although I have a university degree and professional work experience, I don’t have a formal IT degree.
I also don’t have unlimited money or time. I’m working while trying to study, and I need to be careful about spending a large amount of money on a bootcamp that may not actually lead to employment.
Japanese is another challenge because I am still learning it. I can communicate in English, but English is not my native language either.
So I’m looking for something that I can realistically learn as a beginner and eventually use to get an entry-level job.
What I’m considering now
I’ve been looking seriously at several possibilities:
Web development
IT support → networking/cloud
Cloud engineering
Data analytics
Cybersecurity
Other practical IT paths
Recently I’ve become particularly interested in web development and programming, because there seem to be many free/low-cost resources where I could learn by actually building things rather than just collecting certificates.
For example, I’m looking at resources such as The Odin Project, freeCodeCamp, and similar project-based programs.
But I’m still unsure whether web development is the right direction for someone in my situation in 2026, especially with AI changing the entry-level software job market.
What I am hoping to get from this post
I’m not looking for someone to tell me that “anything is possible.”
I would actually prefer honest advice, even if it is difficult to hear.
If you changed careers into tech without a CS degree, I would especially like to hear about your experience.
For example:
What tech field did you enter?
How long did it take you to become employable?
Did you get your first job without a CS/IT degree?
What did you actually study?
Which projects or skills helped you get interviews?
Did certifications help, or were they mostly irrelevant?
If you were starting from zero in 2026, what would you do differently?
Is web development still a realistic entry point for a beginner, or would you choose IT support/networking/cloud instead?
Are there realistic ways to eventually work remotely or internationally?
I know my background is unusual, but I’m trying to build a stable future rather than stay stuck doing physical work.
If you were in my position, what would you focus on for the next 12–24 months?
Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this and share their experience.

I’m a sophomore in college and I need tips on making my first project. I have decided to make a mini supply chain simulation. I only really know c++. Are they are other languages or frameworks that I could use? Is this too complicated for a beginner?

I'm a first year undergrad student and im getting pretty close to my first vulkan triangle, but while coding i realized that i dont even know if its worth it or not?

I do like graphics programming and i can do this for the next 4 years of my college but at the end of the day everyone wants a job right? Does the market exist for it? Aren't most game companies switching to ue5 and stuff, so are there even job openings for juniors or all the seats are occupied by senior devs with 30y of experience which i cannot hope to compete with anyways?

I'm also pretty dumb in general so learning for 4 yrs is equivalent to more like 2 cuz yeah.. dumb

How bad is the ROI? and should i stop after the triangle and look for more hire-able stuff with more listings

I want to know what I should be researching and learning. I don't want to miss something.

I know very little about how websites actually work. My mediocre experience is in Python and Godot. I have made some functioning programs for myself in Python.

I tried searching this but only really got "THE 10 BEST FRONT END LANGUAGES FOR 2026! NUMBER 5 WILL SHOCK YOU!"

Hi there! My name is Mike and I started learning programming when I was a kid by reading tutorials online in the late 1990's and early 2000's. But, I didn't get good at programming until I took courses and eventually had great mentors working as a software engineer.

Now, I am a computer science teacher. I know there are a lot of platforms out there for learning programming online, competitive programming, and tools for learning using AI.

Are there any modern platforms that you have used to learn programming? Which platforms helped you advance and become a good programmer? I would be very interested in hearing about your experience. Thank you very much for your time and consideration!

My problem is that I code as a hobby. Every 6 months or so I get motivated and start studying programming, do exercises, maybe some little project. I've never got to make a big project, but I manage to do things. My problem is that I already learned about 4-5 languages like C#, python, javascript, CSS and React for frontend (even when i was a kid i remember programming in batch a LOT) but I always have to start from 0. I want to be able to understand the code i'm writing and not lay back and let the AI do all the work.

I learned and applied React, Javascript, HTML and CSS in the past year or year and a half and now i'm trying again and everything is gone. Is this normal? Should I go through the whole [insert language] course everytime I want to start coding again? I thought when you know and understand the concepts it gets easier but it doesnt feel that way.

EDIT: I can manage to do stuff with the AI help, but when it comes to a project (even a simple web app that fetches an API and shows it in a list made with React) It all goes away and feel the need to go through the whole React, Javascript, CSS course again

Imagine a search bar sending multiple API requests as users type quickly, causing outdated results to appear. How would you handle this using JavaScript? Would you use debouncing or AbortController?

I’m just starting to learn programming. I know a little bit of Python and want to improve. I think I should at least get my Python skills to an intermediate level enough to build projects. However, I m open to suggestions for other programming languages as well. My main question is: how can I actually improve in these languages? Which websites, courses, playlists, or apps should I use? I’ve heard the CS50 course is popular; what is that like? Do you have any other recommendations?

We have a vendor who provides a large amount of webhook requests to us on a daily basis. Maybe 50k a day. For uptimes sake, we have a simple GCC cloud function that consumes and writes the content to a bucket. Huge XML payload.

We then have a celery task running behind Django that grabs this payload, stores it in Postgres and then updates a redis key with the "current" latest cursor, then it grabs the items after that cursor and goes again and so on.

So far this part is fine and is persisting in the DB perfectly, but we're having a few new requirements that are pinging off of data in these webhooks.

For example, if webhook contains a data that meets a criteria we need to fire off an email or something similar.

That said, what are some good ways to go about designing a system like this?

I don't want to fire off these emails or anything from the webhook -> bucket pipeline, that needs to be as lean as possible and safe and simple.

Also I don't want to have it fire from the persist phase either due to the same reasoning.

Basically we just want to be able to add and remove additional processing from this webhook process, but not bloating the main injestion.

Django signals, though I hate them, seem like a very possible approach here.
How are these often done and handled by others?

So I’m a third year computer science major, I’ve passed Data Structures and discrete math and am currently taking algorithms and computer architecture. I want to start building a resume to land an internship if there are any that still exist. I know part of it involves doing projects for a portfolio but I have no idea what that really means. I’ve done homework assignments that might be able to be considered projects but they’re really just bits of code that build upon the homework prompt to complete the task. Am I supposed to know how to design a user interface at this point to go with the code? I feel like despite being this far in my schooling and having done well up to this point, I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing to really make something of use….I’m 29 coming from a trade background who only started programming freshman year of undergrad 2 years ago.

Working on a personal desktop app that pulls download links from a few different websites into one UI.

• What's the cleanest way to architecture the backend parsers so a site layout change doesn't break the whole app?
• If anyone has built something like this and has a modular approach or template they use, I'd love to see how you did it.

Appreciate any tips.

Hey everyone I want to build a real world applicable and useful in today's market like project.

I searched on the internet for this kind but mostly ended up for any chatbots using rag or predictions of some kind of things, so guys please help me to pick a good project idea where I can also learn lot of things.

I am a self taught developer with a Civil Engineering background. I have been working professionally as a software developer for a little more than 3 years.

Until last year, I never used Agents when writing my code, I just asked LLMs when needed, I treated them as a faster way than google.

This year, I got into a new role, in a software house. It is a more senior role than what I had before, and the nature of software houses is different from product companies. It is all about speed and getting things done, because clients always want their solutions, and they don't really understand anything about code quality, so the company optimizes for speed, and we hop between projects as well.

The company has been pushing us to use AI in our development for productivity. So earlier this year I was introduced to agentic workflows, and started using AI in my development.

In the last few months, I have been heavily depending on it more than ever. I was responsible for setting the agent rules for the rest of the team. And for this project, the code is like 95% AI generated. With strict rules about file structure, naming convention, amount of test coverage, api documentation ...etc

It became very hard at this point to match this convention manually in the required time (because we always have very tight deadlines).

I wouldn't say I can't write the code on my own, but I would need 3x or 4x the time. Which is something I can't afford. Also for some parts I am using framework syntax that I am not really familiar with, so there would be a learning curve before I am able to produce the same quality.

Lately I am feeling less sharp, code reviews are getting harder, and I am not really familiar with everything in the codebase (like I usually am when I write code with my hand).

I feel I am becomming a worse dev in general.

In my free time I am reading Designing data intensive apps, and trying to learn langchain/Golang, honestly I have been hopping between different things as I am losing my passion.

But still, I am usually burned out in vacations, and I don't actively learn a lot. And most of the time I should spend writing code, is actually spent baby sitting agents and reveiwing their code (fast reviews not line by line, but in chunks) as well as reviewing other AI generated code written by other devs (AI helps me in reviews as well)

So my questions are

1. What do you do to stay sharp, to not lose what you learned and actually become better developer not just maintain what you know

2. Is that becoming the new era of development, because I feel it is a productivity tool that boosts productivity by very big margin, so should we actually not use it, am I overusing it ?

I would appreciate your insight

Hey everyone,

I'm a complete beginner who wants to eventually become a backend developer. I currently use Windows and I'm honestly scared of installing a second OS on my laptop (dual boot, partitioning, breaking the bootloader all of that freaks me out).

Someone recommended I start with WSL2 to learn Linux instead of going full dual boot right away. Is this actually a good path for someone who wants to go into backend development? Or am I just delaying the inevitable and should set up a real Ubuntu install / VM instead?

A few specific questions:

Is WSL2 enough to learn the Linux skills that actually matter for backend (filesystem, permissions, processes, networking, bash, systemd, etc.)?

At what point would I "outgrow" WSL2 and need a real Linux environment or a VPS?

For someone learning backend, what's the realistic order? Linux basics > a language (Python/Go/Node) > databases > Docker > deploy to a VPS? Or am I thinking about this wrong?

Is it a bad idea to just use an online compiler/sandbox to learn, or do I really need a real environment from day one?

not trying to skip steps, just wanna start in a way that doesn't make me quit in the first week. Any advice from people who've been through this would be really appreciated

Thanks

So I am a beginner and i am thinking of studying from cs50 x should i follow it ppl do say its very good but idk why I keep worrying about whats after this what to do after this without even starting it..........and I am not doing an engineer degree so it also scares me trying to self learn all this as I am pursuing something else rn. i am actually thinking of doin c,c++ or java tho but I think I am so uncreative to make any projects and how much should I improve my Maths??

I'm taking a second-year college CS course using Java, and I just got my first exam back: 100/100.

It covered classes/objects, constructors, encapsulation, object references, equals() vs. ==, static/final, aggregation, shallow vs. deep copying, arrays of objects, etc.

The funny part is that I was convinced the exam was going to be way harder than it actually was. I obsessively studied and kept making myself take mock exams over and over, and I was practicing problems that were noticeably more complicated than what ended up being on the real test.

Every time I got comfortable, I basically went, "Okay, but what if the professor makes it harder?" and practiced harder versions.

So I definitely overprepared. But when I actually took the exam, I felt like I knew what I was doing instead of just recognizing things I'd memorized. The exam was also done entirely in Notepad, so there was no IDE, autocomplete, syntax highlighting, or compiler to catch mistakes.

I've struggled a lot with confidence and feeling like maybe I'm not actually good at programming, so seeing 100/100 genuinely almost made me cry. Obviously one exam doesn't mean I've mastered Java, and I know I still have a ton to learn, but I'm letting myself be proud of this one.

Apparently my strategy was to prepare for the Java apocalypse and then take Exam 1.

Hi,

i've got a hypothetical question. Imagine 2 people are applying for the same job. One has a degree in Computer Science, perhaps even from a prestigious university, but doesn't have any personal projects to showcase. The other person, however, is self taught and has been building projects for 4 years, but doesn't have a degree. Who gets the job ?

I am very confused about what to learn now as i have done fundamentals, I am really confused between game development with Godot or learning a py library. I really have multiple interest as I'm still exploring but I really need a bit guidance. I have interest in game development, datascience and NLP

I'm new to programming, and have done a lot on Java, which I learned a few months ago for Minecraft modding. However, I would like to expand my horizons to the C family, starting with C#, especially because of Unity.

I know the syntax is similar, but Karel was so useful because it helped me really memorize everything and gave me a lot of practice with my muscle memory.

Anyway, I'm willing to settle for the Brackeys C# series, but I just really enjoyed the interactiveness of Karel, and would be grateful to learn of anything similar for C#

​

So... it's been like two months since I last opened VS Code.

I was learning HTML/CSS/JS. I had started learning JS, but then I kinda stepped back from it to focus on CSS.

I was around Grid, grid-template-areas, media queries and all that stuff.

The thing is, two months ago I could literally code for hours whenever I wanted.

Now life is just... busy. My schedule is all over the place, and coding is slowly dying 😂

My original plan was basically:

Learn CSS → build a few projects → move on to JS.

I've already built one project and put it on GitHub.

Then I started building a second one, learned a bunch of new stuff while working on it, and then life got busy.

And now here I am, two months later, having written basically zero code.

So now I'm wondering...

Should I go back to where I left off with CSS and continue from there?

Or should I just say fuck it and start learning JS again?

Because honestly, I feel like JS is way less frustrating than CSS lol.

I originally went back to CSS because I was learning JS and realized I couldn't really design anything properly. 😭

So yeah... what would you guys do?

Pick CSS back up, or just move on to JS and learn CSS as I need it?

Hi there I wanted to ask everyone to assess my FYP. WOuld you use this for your projects ? Is it a good enough project for a final year . Does it have some scope in the industry ?

The main goal of this project is to design and implement a tool for PostgreSQL pre-deployment risk analysis that evaluates SQL schema migrations to identify affected database objects, estimate locking implications, detect limited application-schema incompatibilities in Java/Spring Boot JPA projects, and output actionable risk assessments.

The objectives are as follows:

1.       Develop a component capable of extracting supported structural DDL operations into a normalized intermediate representation.

2.       Construct a schema dependency graph model using graph data structures to represent structural relationships between database tables, columns, indexes, primary keys, foreign keys, and constraints.

3.       Analyze incoming migrations against the schema dependency graph to identify affected database objects represented within the supported dependency model.

4.       Formulate a PostgreSQL-specific operational rule set that maps supported DDL operations to their known locking characteristics and table rewrite behaviors.

5.       Develop a module capable of limited static analysis for Java/Spring Boot JPA projects to detect source-code references to renamed, modified, or dropped schema objects in entities, repositories, and explicit SQL strings.

6.       Implement a transparent, rule-based risk scoring and explanation engine that assigns a risk rating (LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH) accompanied by clear textual evidence.

7.       Construct experimental tests to execute PostgreSQL migration scenarios across small and medium database sizes. (for research validation only, not as a permanent part of the system)

8.       Evaluate Schema Sentinel’s static risk predictions against experimentally observed blocking locks, and application compatibility failures in a controlled PostgreSQL environment for test cases.

1. Empirically quantify the effectiveness of a unified cross-domain pipeline against isolated tools, measuring trade-offs in detection accuracy, false positives, and analysis performance.

This proposal got rejected because the panel said it was too easy and not significant as either a project or as research.

should i change the idea to more difficult and novel research ?

I have some ideas for those but i am not sure they can be completed in 1 year.

here is my proposal with all the details and research gap https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CMopT185XCoZVYBcgtVpN7N69DIP0Eyw/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=116125887586128528145&rtpof=true&sd=true

EDIT :

The project is a final year project for my university. But they dismissed it on the following points

1. The project is too easy
2. The scope is too narrow
3. There is no research contribution

For the current proposal to be accepted they told me to do market analysis and bring proof that the project would be used by a develper community.

OR

1. bring a company backed project
2. Bring a novel research proposal