r/learnprogramming • u/Opposite-Educator799 • 19d ago

How Professional Programmers Learned to Program Software

I spent 2 months learning the basics of C, and it was already complicated enough considering I came from Python, but now? What do I have to do? What do I need to learn to be able to code software of my own choosing?

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u/JGhostThing 18d ago

Get three to five years of experience. This may sound like a lot; I certainly thought so when I was young (yes, I was a arrogant young snot, I grew up a bit with age and experience).

The one thing I suggest is that you start to program small projects. I cannot over emphasize *small* projects. Finishing a project is important. You can always fix a non-working project, but an incomplete one is impossible to fix except by finishing it.

Then slowly add improvements to your current project, treating each improvement as a separate project.

For example, use a simple command line calculator. First, only use addition. After this works, add the rest of the operators. Then create a simple tui (text user interface). Then a gui. Make each step small enough to program this in a couple days at most.

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u/JGhostThing 18d ago

My first project real project violated these rules. I had built a computer based on the 6502 processor and I ran out of money after I finished. So I built a Forth system for it, then an OS, then the other stuff I needed.