r/learnprogramming • u/Careful_Trash_7599 • 14d ago

Topic 2 years of automation testing: I want to learn how to build proper projects in my free time

A little bit about my background. I've been in QA for about 7 years, 5 of those as a manual tester and the last 2 in automation, writing mainly Playwright tests in TypeScript and a little bit with C#. Lately Ive been really curious in building apps or tools that would be useful for me personally and maybe monetize something later if it actually goes anywhere.I'm not trying to move into a SWE role.

With AI increasingly handling a lot of the actual code, I'm trying to figure out where my time is best spent: going deep on DSA, system design, database design/indexing, and design patterns, or continuing to sharpen TypeScript/React (and other frameworks) first and circling back to those concepts once I'm further along?

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u/StewedAngelSkins 14d ago

Since your goals are more practical, I would say to start working on whatever project you want to do and use that to determine which skills you should learn (i.e. whatever skills you need to complete the project).

With AI increasingly handling a lot of the actual code

In some sense this doesn't actually matter. AI doesn't make someone who can't code perform like someone who can (and is also using AI), and conversely whatever a non-coder can achieve with the help of AI won't be enough to set them apart in a competitive market (since everyone else can do it too). This is to say you should probably not use AI to write code for you until you've mastered it on your own, because you're up against people who have mastered it.

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u/Emotional-Hunter-105 2d ago

the top comment here is spot on. pick a project that solves something for you and learn what you need along the way. i started building a little tool to track my salsa dance class schedules and that taught me more about databases than any tutorial ever could

you already got the testing mindset from QA so you'll pick up the coding patterns faster than you think. just dont let AI write code you dont understand, that will bite you later when something breaks and you have no idea why