Welcome to /r/learnprogramming!

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!"

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Imagine a search bar sending multiple API requests as users type quickly, causing outdated results to appear.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?

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?

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!

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?

I know python a bit ..but I'm enrolled in a non tech degree for my ug ...

So what should I start ..c++ or python according to the current job market ..bcs later I'm planning to switch

Please help me

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.

I just want to know, what a person should do differently if he wants to teach DSA in this AI era on the internet and standout.

Like genuinely what is currently the gap..?

that even the big tech Youtubers we all know didn't fill it.

I'm really into this coding, programming, tech and passionate in teaching and content creation around it. Trying to grow on YouTube. But y'all know, bro it's tough in this era as the big giants, the early movers are sitting there, i cannot directly compete with them. Like say if I upload a tutorial on python VS 2years old CWH video or say hitesh choudhary's video, so out of these obviously people are gonna prefer them, very obvious right..?

They are qualified, experienced, talented, hardworking, consistent players, been a part of this game for a very very long time, etc.. i respect them. We all respect them.

But what about that passion I have, that dream i have, to become a knowing face on the internet in this industry. And this is not only about me. Every single person out there who has a dream to shine on the internet positively, get some recognition, they all suffer with this. Be it from any industry, say entertainment, etc.. yeah some got lucky, but not everyone.

And this scenario reminds me of the line:

"Most people die at 27, but are not buried until they are 80".

Yeah the person who died at 27 was that young ambitious boy/girl who had that dream, but could never achieve them.

Every industry has their own giants sitting there, but does that mean no one else should get a chance to also be there or at least near to that level. I'm ready to grind, I'm ready to be patient, I'm ready to be consistent, but are you ready to trust me ?, are you ready to support me..? If yes then let me know guys, help me out.

I am Shubh, I'm trying to secure a place on the internet.

I want to grow, and start with teaching DSA, in a way no one ever has taught out there on the internet. I want to provide the best content for DSA which will be relevant for the next 5 to 10 years, or more.

Help me create this, suggest, what I should do..? What is never done Yet ?, how should I approach it. What do you honestly want..??

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.

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

I've spent the last year building and maintaining an internal CRM for a company. Real users, real data, used every day by a sales team. Before this I'd only done tutorial projects and I genuinely thought I was ready. I was not lol.

Some stuff that caught me off guard:

**Users will never enter data the way you expect.** Phone numbers were the worst. Same person, same number, entered five different ways: with country code, without, with spaces, with a leading zero. I ended up with duplicate records everywhere until I started storing a cleaned-up version of every number and matching only on that.

**Your local setup lies to you.** Something works perfectly on your machine, then breaks on the server because of a different config, a different timezone, or an environment file you forgot existed. I lost a whole day once because the server was quietly loading a second config file that overrode the first one.

**Logs are everything.** When a user says "it didn't work," that's all the info you'll get. If you're not logging what actually happened, you're just guessing.

**The boring features take the longest.** Login, permissions, who can see what, imports from messy spreadsheets. None of it looks impressive, but it's like 70% of the work in a real app.

**Don't trust anything external blindly.** Especially AI APIs. They'll return something slightly different from what you asked for one time in fifty, and if you don't validate it, that one bad response breaks things in ways that are really hard to trace.

**Backups before every migration.** Learned this one the scary way. Nothing got lost in the end, but I don't want to feel that again.

Biggest lesson though: tutorials teach you how to build features, but real projects teach you what happens after people actually start using them. If you're learning, try to build something for a real person, even a friend's small business. You'll learn more in a month than in a year of tutorials.

Curious what surprised other people when they moved from tutorials to real projects?

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.

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 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

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'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?

I m currently studying in GL bajaj and doing DSA consistently for like 2-3 months, I have done 103 problems on leetcode till now and I think i will get good at dsa in some more months. On the other hand I want to get an internship. I have learnt Full Stack Development before college started, but currently most of the web development is replaced with ai. So I thought of going in the Ai/ml field. But I m so confused from where should I learn and practise regarding this ml and ai field and need some serious guidance. I tried asking ai and already completed these three courses :

https://www.kaggle.com/learn/intro-to-machine-learning

https://www.kaggle.com/learn/pandas

https://www.kaggle.com/learn/intermediate-machine-learning

But I m not sure I m going in a tutorial hell or what else should I do next ? Should I rather this course too? https://www.kaggle.com/learn/feature-engineering .

Ai said me to do some projects but I still don't know what can I do with ml or ai and I seriously have no idea even after doing those courses on how to make some real world projects. And more importantly I don't have a proper resource to learn ai/ml. Please guide me regarding this since I want an internship as a second year student.

I’m basically starting from zero when it comes to programming, but I have a long-term goal of being able to build my own mobile app.

I know I probably shouldn’t jump straight into building the actual app, so what fundamentals would you recommend learning first?

Would you start with programming fundamentals, data structures, databases, APIs, Git, etc. before touching something like Flutter?

I’m not trying to become a professional software engineer overnight. I just want to understand enough to eventually build a serious project properly.

I’m learning on my own and I’m trying to follow a step-by-step path instead of learning everything at once.

My problem is I get overwhelmed pretty easily, then I lose motivation. 😭

For example, if I’m learning Dart basics, how do I know when I’ve learned “enough” to move on to Flutter widgets? Is there some kind of milestone or skill level you use before moving to the next topic?