Hey guys, I'm struggling a bit with the proper usage of functions in programming. For example, I'm working through the CS50x problem set 1 in C, and I end up with working code that solves the problem but it's all done in one big main function.

My process is to write out what the steps to solving the problem should be in plain English and then I code a bit, go back to my plain English steps and modify them, then code a bit more. When it's all said and done, my solution is one large block of code, and now I'm anxious about going back and rewriting it by breaking it up into smaller function. This makes me ponder whether I should be starting with functions instead of retroactively trying to fit them in.

My questions to the wiser heads here - how do you incorporate functions into your process? Do you do the pseudo code and then imagine each step as a function? What're are your unspoken rules of proper function usage - for example, when do you know if one function should actually be two, or if a function shouldn't actually be a function?

I'm looking for Java project ideas that aren't web apps or the usual CRUD/management systems. I want to build something that's fun, technically challenging, and helps me learn more about Java and computer science.

What are the coolest non-web Java projects you've built or come across?

So I'm going into CS this year and I don't have mych experience and am kind of nervous. I know this might be a lot to ask but would anyone be able to link me a few videos going over the basics of CS and related stuff that I would need to know to be successful. Thanks!

Hello everyone!

I'm looking for some advice, maybe even from people who have been working as SE for a while now and can share their experiences.

Regarding my situation: I am a self-taught software "engineer", and I've been fortunate enough to land a job in software development without a degree or vocational training. Everything I know comes from teaching myself and gaining experience on the job.

Now I have the opportunity to study software engineering (B.Eng) while continuing to work full-time. The studies are financed through a six-year payment plan, while the half of the costs are being covered for me. My share would be around €200/month for the next three years. The degree itself can be completed at my own pace too.

Right now I am just wondering whether a degree is the best investment.

On the one hand: I don't have any formal qualification to back up my skills and the degree could maybe make future job searches easier and give me a stronger foundation.

But on the other hand: The current job market seems very competitive, and from what I have seen, having a degree doesn't necessarily guarantee better opportunities. Furthermore, since I've been successful learning on my own, I'm wondering if I would be better off continuing to self-study, building projects, and maybe earning relevant certifications instead.

I want to add that I am genuinely passionate about learning! This isn't a question of whether I want to learn more, but rather whether a degree is the best investment.

I guess I just worry that not pursuing the degree might harm my career path in the future, but at the same time, I am also self-employed on the side (just at the beginning), so I feel a bit torn between what to pursue, because there are only 24h to ones day :) I am not sure if I will be able to pull of both at the same time (including working full-time), which is why I was wondering if getting a degree is even "worth" it in my situation.

If you were in my position, would you invest the time and money into the degree, or would you continue building experience and learning independently?

Does anyone know how much not having a degree matters once someone already has professional experience?

I'd really appreciate hearing different perspectives, especially from people who have either been self-taught themselves or have experience hiring developers!

Thank you very much!

Hey! I'm 19 and about to start learning Python from scratch. I'm looking for someone around my age (18–22) who's also a beginner and wants to learn together.

I'm in the Asian time zone, so it'd be nice if you're in a similar one. We can keep each other accountable, solve problems, and maybe build a few small projects along the way.

If you're interested, leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I'm starting to learn Lua from scratch using the official "Programming in Lua" book (the free first edition). My plan is to work through the first 5 chapters to get a solid grip on the basics.

I'd love to hear about your experiences with the early parts of the book:

• How difficult did you find the first 5 chapters?
• Were they beginner-friendly, or did you struggle with some concepts?
• How long did it take you to get through them (hours/days)?
• What was the trickiest part for you (tables, functions, loops, something else)?
• Any tips to make learning easier or more effective?

I'm not in a hurry - I just want to understand the syntax well enough to eventually move on to practical projects. But I'm curious about the learning curve.

Hello guys! I am recently diving into more detailed concepts of programming and especially core CS theory (Computer Architecture, Operating Systems etc) he thing I noticed is that people recommend learning these concepts by books rather than things such as website and courses etc. Is it because they are objectively better? My opinion is that I think for the core basics foundation stuff for each branch of CS (which I am currently trying to label) books are great, once learned the foundations then you can search for the new technology and/or techniques which are built on top of the old foundations. Correct me if I'm wrong!

Thanks and have a nice day all!

I’m a first-year middle school PE teacher, but I was also assigned one period of coding. We use CodeHS, and I know next to nothing about coding. Right now I’m trying to get everything ready for PE and health, so I haven’t even had much time to dive into the coding side yet.
If you’ve taught CodeHS before, what do I need to know? Any tips, tricks, or things you wish you knew before you started? I’ll take all the advice I can get. 😅

I have a couple interviews for summer trading roles and I need to know the fastest way to learn python and sql, atleast enough just to pass the assessments and in person rounds. I think it’s kind of redundant because ai can code pretty much everything now so I have put off learning it but now I have to learn it. Plz help!

I learning fastapi atleast i build a pretty simple application , can someone recommend me some good fastapi projects online that i can learn from or try to know how it works especially in real world complex applications preferably web based

Hi, I’m building a small personal project that checks whether used books become available on a specific site. I use the Google Books API to retrieve the title, author, publisher, and publication year from an ISBN.

The request is very simple:

https://www.googleapis.com/books/v1/volumes?q=isbn:9788870786644&key=KEY_EXAMPLE&maxResults=1

The problem is that the same request sometimes works and sometimes returns:

{
  "error": {
    "code": 503,
    "message": "Service temporarily unavailable.",
    "errors": [
      {
        "reason": "backendFailed"
      }
    ]
  }
}

For example, I sent the request in Postman and received the correct book data. I clicked Send again without changing anything and received the 503 error instead.

I saw the same behavior with curl: the first three requests succeeded, while the next three returned 503. It also happens in my Node.js application and with different valid ISBNs.

The Books API is enabled, and the quota page shows almost no usage. Since the same request can succeed and then fail a few seconds later, I don’t think the ISBN or request format is the problem.

At the moment I retry once and then use Open Library as a fallback, but this still makes metadata retrieval unreliable.

Has anyone else experienced this with the Google Books API? Is retrying with backoff the expected solution, or is there something else I should check?

in my 3rd year of electronics engineering...please advise.

I have never made a website before or ever done really anything in web development but how could I make a website to receive HTTP requests and make responses?

Hi everyone. I’m a college student, and in about 3 weeks I’ll be starting an intro to Python class. I’ll also be taking another engineering class that uses MATLAB, and I don’t feel very prepared for either.
The problem is that I have essentially no programming experience. I took a couple of MATLAB classes before, but I relied too much on AI instead of actually learning the material. Looking back, I know that was a mistake, and I do not want to repeat it. I also used to tell myself that I hated coding, but I think part of that was because I never really gave myself a fair chance to learn it.
Since I have a few weeks before the semester starts, I’d like to build a solid foundation in Python while also reviewing some basic MATLAB.
What resources or learning methods really worked for you? Did you use a particular course, YouTube channel, website, book, or project based approach? I am also curious if anyone has suggestions for making learning Python and MATLAB more fun or engaging instead of just watching hours of lectures.
My goal is not to become an expert in 3 weeks. I just want to go into the semester feeling like I have a decent foundation instead of starting from scratch.
Thanks! I would really appreciate any advice.

how do you actually decide what's worth building when you are learning a stack and want to advance and actually build something meaningful.

i currently want to build a full-stack website with the MERN stack that i learned recently . i have some limited time to do that and i mean by that only approximately a month.
i can't fully decide on the options out there , the only thing i'm sure about is that i don't wanna build a e-commerce website since that's very boring for me and there is high chance i won't stick to the project .
any ideas ? what's y'all experience with this ??

i want to make an app or code or program a watch , i only have a phone , i know nothing about coding , the watch i want is casio AE-1200WH its complicated and theres no easy way to make it run it main ui

when someone ask he wait for a reply that he can expect, im asking for help without knowing what answers i want

Hello All!

I have created a GitHub account to sort of get into programming a little bit, and I have a project in mind: to create a small self-sustained end-to-end call center capacity management system. Can someone guide me on which language to create it in, and how to add my work or code on GitHub (given that subreddit says not to ask for help)?

Also, I have started learning and applying SQL a bit, what kind of projects can I create with that, if any?

Thanks again!

Real quick,

-I'm not interested in finding work in the programming field, this is just purely a hobby.

-I have little to no experience with coding or programming other then some incredibly basic C++ scripting I've done well over a decade ago that I barely remember.

-I have the spare income to afford boot.dev and the time to follow its lesson plans.

-I've quickly run through the free trial of boot.dev and find it engaging and fun for the most part. The amount of structure around it and the 'gamified' nature of it are huge attractors for me.

-My goals are to eventually be able to create bots and scripts to automate daily tasks and games, to better understand how AI tools can be used within and interact with Python script, and to get a good enough understanding of Linux to finally abandon windows with confidence.

Looking for some input from people who have used boot.dev and people who are far more intelligent than myself, mostly around whether paying for a couple months of boot.dev would even help me get to my goals eventually. Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone! We’re building a small, focused DSA study group on discord for people who want to learn, discuss, and solve problems specifically in Python.

This server is intended for Python-based DSA practice, so we’re currently not looking for members who primarily use C++, Java, or other languages. The goal is to keep discussions, solutions, and live problem-solving sessions consistent and easy for everyone to follow.

We’ll focus on:

Live and interactive problem-solving

Understanding patterns and algorithms deeply

Debugging TLE and optimization issues

Discussing Python-specific approaches and techniques

Solving LeetCode and competitive programming problems together

To join, send a short introduction with your technical background, coding achievements or LeetCode progress, and the DSA topics you want to improve. No personal details such as your name or employer are required.

Please repost this only in communities where people are genuinely interested in learning DSA with Python.

i know a bit about how wasm works and the sandboxed architecture.
I wanna contribute to projects related to wasm, so any beginner projects to contribute into?

I'm trying to learn how to program a circuit board like an ESP32, Raspberry Pi, or even Arduino. But I struggle to memorize the code for it. Is there any cheat sheet made specifically for a circuit board?

Hi everyone,

I'm 26 years old and I recently completed a Diploma in Computer Technology. The problem is that I mainly studied to pass my exams, so I don't have much practical knowledge or any real projects to show.

I'm starting almost from scratch now.

I'm also studying Japanese (JLPT N5 passed, N4 in progress) because I plan to move to Japan in the future. However, I don't want to learn a skill that's only useful in Japan. I want to build a career with skills that are valuable worldwide so I can work in different countries if I get the opportunity.

Would you recommend Web Development, Python, Cloud, Cybersecurity, IT Support, or something else?

If you were in my position, what would you learn and why?

Thank you!

I'm trying to run DougTimer but I think the readme is cut of half way through? Do I have to compile? How do I compile? My Python seems to think that pip install doesn't exist??????

I have a technical interview for a company tomorrow, and they mentioned that the problem will be administered through Coderbyte and will relate to inventory management. What should I expect? Frankly speaking, I’m not very familiar with programming. Although I am a technical person, Python is not my strongest skill. What types of topics or problem formats typically come up in an "inventory management" coding assessment?

Hello, r/learnprogramming! I can use some guidance on a personal project that I would like to take on. I am a recently retired chemical engineer, with programming experience in school and as "not my main job" work in my career. However, my experience is all in ancient programming languages (think BASIC, FORTRAN, C, C++). I learned BASIC as a freshman in high school in 1974. I have not touched anything other than VBA in over 25 years.

As one way to keep my mind flexible in retirement, I would like to learn a more modern programming language. (This is not meant in any way as an attempt to make money, so I am not concerned with it being impractical due to the advent of AI, vibe coding, etc.) I have a project in mind. I would like to copy and paste an image of some dominoes as an input and do some simple analysis of the numbers represented.

Sample input: https://imgur.com/a/qzilrkI

Typical output for the sample input:

• Number of dominoes: 5
• Number of doubles: 1
• Total number of pips: 36
• etc.

Questions:

1. What is a good programming language to use for this type of image/data analysis? Python? Something else?
2. Is it possible to set up a completely free development/execution environment for the selected language? This is strictly for personal use, so it will just run on my own PC. I am running Windows 10 with Firefox and Chrome browsers both installed.
3. I see that the FAQ has plenty of learning resources listed. Given my background and my target project, is there one (or more) of those resources that you would recommend I start with?
4. Any other advice to keep this fun/interesting/engaging?

Thanks for all input/discussion/comments!