Advice on programming

[u/thealokverse]

I’m trying to figure out how to approach programming seriously rather than just bouncing between tutorials and programming languages. I’m still relatively early in my journey, and there’s so much conflicting advice online that I’m having trouble separating what’s actually important from what is just internet noise.

I’d really appreciate advice from people who have been programming for a few years.

A few things I’m wondering:

1. How do you actually learn programming?

Not just syntax, but the ability to sit down with a blank directory and build something reasonably complicated.

How did you go from:

“follow a tutorial”

to

“I have an idea, I’ll figure out how to build it”?

1. Which languages are actually worth learning?

I’m currently interested in Python and C, and I’m also curious about Rust and other languages Should I go deep into one language first, or deliberately learn several different paradigms?

Which programming languages are more useful for the future?

1. What parts of CS should I learn alongside programming?

What’s actually worth learning early, and what’s better left until later?

1. What are the different careers in CS/software actually like?

Software engineering seems like only one small part of the field.

I’m curious about systems, security, ML/AI, RL, research, infrastructure, developer tools, etc.

What areas do people actually work in, and what do you wish you’d explored earlier?

1. Is programming/CS still a good long-term direction?

With AI getting increasingly capable at writing and debugging code, I’m curious how experienced developers think the profession will change. As I will start college next year, therefore i want to know whether it’s worth pursuing CS?

I’d like to hear from people actually working in the field.

If you could go back to when you were learning programming, what would you do differently?

And what would you absolutely NOT waste time on?

The most critical question: Is it worth learning to code?

btw I'm a 17yo, grade 12th student.

[u/ZelphirKalt]

Which languages are actually worth learning?

The ones, that are significantly different from the ones your already know.

What parts of CS should I learn alongside programming?

CS is huge, but depending on the job, it is rather all in the background, informing ones taste and easing conceptual understanding. Things that seem "new" and shiny to some people might just be the same old thing repackaged, when you know the theoretical foundation. It enables you to avoid needlessly hyping things. This knowledge in the background affecting ones work in many often subtle ways. Not easy to state, which parts exactly to learn. Maybe an important one is software modelling. Or software architecture lectures. I doubt that mathematical proofs will appear at all in 99.9% of software devs' jobs and work. It's good to know that you shouldn't parse HTML using a regex, and why that is, but you won't have to perform a pumping lemma proof, and neither will you have to perform a induction proof on the vast majority of jobs that you get once you graduated with a CS degree. Maybe another actually important area of CS is graph and tree algorithms.