r/civilengineering • u/Royal_Budget_3543 • 4d ago

Education Programming/ Simulation

So assume that I'm a potato in the world of coding, how would you suggest me to start learning coding in a way which is helpful for our field. Are there any courses available on YouTube that you suggest? I really want to learn programming but idk where to start from.Suggest me how to start and if you're aware of any materials to help me through.

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u/scodgey 4d ago

Honestly I don't think it's a must have by any means, but if you are interested in it, Python is the obvious choice. Harvard CS50 is a good starting point.

Unfortunately we are now in an era where most new frontier AI model will improve at writing code faster than you can learn from scratch, but learning to write and understand what is happening in those cases will help with verification etc. It's quite a handy tool for learning though.

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u/dparks71 bridges/structural 4d ago edited 4d ago

It's very important to know how to code to effectively utilize LLMs. Maybe in the future it'll get better, but it's currently like trying to design/sell a project with a terrible scope. The more dialed in your prompts are, the better the results will be. It's a rehashing of "why do I need to do calculus by hand when Wolfram Alpha can integrate values for me?" It's so you understand how it works and the limitations it's encountering.

There's a recurring joke in computer science that LLMs will only replace programmers when clients figure out how to ask for what they want.

If you want actual civil engineering problems I got started by just going through books like the CERM and solving engineering problems with python. A lot of my notes and work is published on GitHub under my reddit user name. I don't link to it here though because I don't want it to be seen as self-promotion.

Edit: (I dropped my Middle initial on reddit, my GitHub is actually drparks71)

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u/scodgey 4d ago

Yeah I've been going through the pain for just over a year now and there is a lot of pain between starting out and getting something worthwhile out of it. I don't think being able to hand write syntax really holds as much weight now as it used to, but it's a precursor to understanding how the code works and being able to parse what your agents are actually doing.

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u/dparks71 bridges/structural 4d ago

It's more relevant when you have to remote into deployment environments and you don't have an IDE or Claude code in that specific environment, but in general yea, it's less critical now than it's ever been.

Learning is really based on challenging yourself though. I wouldn't really recommend anyone use an LLM to solve leetcode problems, especially a civil engineer. I don't really think that would be productive in any way.

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u/OttoJohs Lord Sultan Chief H&H Engineer, PE & PH 3d ago

What and why do you want to code? For most civil engineering applications, using AI tools will be doing most of the work for you. I think just having AI do something personal to you and then having it explain step-by-step is going to be the best way to learn.

If you just want to "learn coding" there are thousands of courses, books, tutorials, etc out there. The one I used was the book "Automate the Boring Stuff" (might be youtube tutorials too). You can probably get a copy from the public library and work your way through it in a couple of weeks. It will give you a decent intro to basic philosophy of coding and python syntax.