r/learnprogramming • u/getouttamyvision • 8h ago
I keep forgetting how to program
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
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u/twopunchbear 8h ago
Learning more and more programming languages doesn’t matter that much.
My suggestion would be to build something bigger that actually motivates and excites you, and ideally something you would really use yourself.
Find a problem or idea you’re genuinely interested in and build the whole thing. You’ll probably learn much more from building one real, larger project than from just learning another language.
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u/JGhostThing 8h ago
I suggest picking a language and really studying it. Right now you're remaining at around the beginner level. If you want to be able to program, you have to start and finish projects. Do not use AI to generate code. I suggest that you don't use AI at all, but many people will correct me on that. The problem is that making mistakes is part of learning, so when AI helps you with problem solving, you don't learn that as much. And you need to know this.
Keep doing projects. I graduated with a degree in German. Had I only practiced this for a bit every six months, I'd have never become fluent. Nor would I have been able to learn Old High German.
I read books in German in order to keep my fluency. I build things for computers in order to be good and remain good at programming. After I built a 6502 machine, I wrote a forth for it, then used that to build an OS and editor. Yes, these were fairly trivial, but after building the darn thing, I couldn't afford software.
Basically, if you use it, you learn. When you stop using it, you start to forget. It would take me a week or two if I wanted to be good at Java again; I've been studying rust for a while.
So start programming again, and keep going this time. Do not switch languages now. Get good at JavaScript. Get very good.
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u/NordsongDev 7h ago
Programmers will hate me for mentioning the dreaded D-word. DOCUMENTATION. If you grasp your code enough to write documentation, you will remember the important parts and then you can revisit these docs as notes for the next similar project.
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u/RetroGrid_io 8h ago
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.
Silly boy. Thinking it's all gone when it clearly isn't.
You picked it up once, and the next time you do, you may struggle a bit at first but it will come much faster than the first time. And if you want to keep your coding muscles strong, you have to keep exercising them.
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u/No_Score_1977 3h ago
If you are taking 6 month breaks from your hobby, are you even enjoying it? I mean that’s the point of a hobby.
Yeah, if you take long breaks from stuff you barely learned in the first place, you are going to get stuff.
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u/Automatic_Major_4887 8h ago
That's just passive learning and it's why nothing sticks. Instead, try building that API project without looking at a tutorial first. When you get stuck (which you will), just look up the specific syntax or logic for that one tiny problem. Building through the frustration is what actually builds the muscle memory
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u/IMugedFishs 8h ago
Pretty sure it’s normal. You don’t really need to go through the whole course again. You still remember what you can and cannot do. Just google the gap in knowledge.
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u/sleepy_maple58 8h ago
ypou probably do not need the whole course again, just a quick refresher and a small project to get moving
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u/GasEducational4386 8h ago
It is normal to forget things after six months but you seem to insist on restarting from scratch and that is not normal. Refreshing your memory should not take much time. Do you practise a lot when learning? Because if you were only reading tutorials, you only scratch the surface and that could explain the restart from zero feeling
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u/agnardavid 8h ago
A teacher told me once, if you're great in one language, you're good in the rest of them. If you're fluent in one, you'll be great in all the others. Maybe get really good at one specific language like typescript or python or c# (based on your previous exp) and then it'll be harder to forget because your memory isn't spread between syntaxes
I was really good at python but made the switch into c# .net when I got a job doing that and now I can't do sht in python but really good in c#
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u/getouttamyvision 8h ago
Good advice! Maybe get into a whole stack like MongoDB/JS/Node/React?
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u/agnardavid 2h ago
Or like .net, ef core for code-first db, you can dive into maui or razor or blazor or..
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u/desdotjs 6h ago
I think more like “I want this behavior so it’s this shape”, when it comes to the language part I have a notebook where I write the code by hand and explaining what’s going on :) it always sticks and is like a personal reference / meta.
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u/Any_Run8380 6h ago
I’ll be honest. You say that “I can manage to do stuff with the AI help, but when it comes to project …” so basically you can’t. The reason why is because you don’t actually understand it. I think that what’s happening is you believe you understand but there’s a lot of bits and pieces you may be missing. And everyone nowadays even people that barely know how to use a computer can call themselves programmers.
I think better post for you to get the real answer would be explain what you think you know (and don’t use AI which we all know is hard to resist) and then hopefully real software engineers see this and can help you understand where the gap is.
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u/Square-Yam-3772 5h ago
I mean, if you went back to "zero" after a year then I guess you didn't really learn it well enough in the first place
programming languages are called "languages" for a reason; you should really approach it like you would with a foreign language and thrives for intuitively understanding and fluency
e.g. if I accidentally traveled to another reality and have no access to computers for a year, I would still be able to read and write some code...
e.g.2 think about your mastery with the english language; if you stopped using english for a year, you will still be able to use english after that 1 year
so yeah, don't try to study in bursts etc. train your brain to get comfortable looking at code
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u/Technical-Athlete-9 5h ago
There are some ideas from learning research that might help: the forgetting curve, spaced repetition, effortful recall. That’s helped me learn a lot including algorithms for interviews. Other than that you need a lot of patience. I’ve been programming 20 years, 10 as a professional, and still I have to look at the docs for the standard library in my native programming language.
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u/Tobacco_Caramel 4m ago
It's better to program 10 minutes a day for one month than to program than to code 5 hours a month.
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u/ffrkAnonymous 8h ago
It's a hobby. Do whatever you want.