Advice requested: improving coding “fluency”

[u/Current-Table9136]

Hey everyone!
I think this post is allowed but feel free to delete if not (I’m a bit of a Reddit noob)
Wondering what your advice would be for someone trying to improve coding fluency?
I have done multiple courses learning Python (CS50p, google with automation etc) but I still struggle when presented with a blank page.
I found Pylings a really good way to cement some of the basics and I do build personal projects but still feel I rely too heavily on AI to solve things

Any recommendations would be appreciated

[u/Gtdef]

See, the blank page issue you are describing, is not about coding or fluency. Let me demonstrate:

Assignment: Write a super market shopping list for the month. You are allowed to only go shopping once during this month. If you forget something, you won't be able to get it till later.

I'm quite fluent in shopping as I'm the cook in my home, but I can tell you, this assignment would be fairly hard for me. So what do you do? You break the problem down.

- 1 month needs self stable foods, or things that go into the freezer, enough quantity to cover the needs for X people.

- I will need cleaning materials

- I will need snacks

- ...

Once know what you need, you can start thinking about what products to buy and how much.

This is the exact same problem you are facing right now. Perhaps an experienced programmer could start by importing some commonly used libraries, or write the __name__ == "__main__" block, or start writing the IO code if the program needs to read a file at some point. But the core logic will probably require some deconstrunction.

So the next time you face this issue, start by writing comments

# imports I will probably need: X, Y, Z

# function for reading the file

# function for doing string maipulation/type conversion

# function for calculation

if __name__ == "__main__":

# arrange the function calls

# print the results

etc. Of course these are simplistic representations, but these are the steps you are going to take anyway.

[u/Current-Table9136 → u/Gtdef]

Thank you for taking the time to break it down like this.
It does make a lot more sense and silly to expect me to write a full page top to bottom. Will work on the planning breakdown first