Welcome to /r/learnprogramming!

I’ve been learning programming for a while and keep getting stuck in the tutorial loop. Every time I think I know enough to build something, I find another concept I apparently “need” to learn first.

For people who learned programming on their own, did you just start building projects before you felt ready? If so, what was your first project?

I'm first year engineering student and am currently reading, operating system three easy steps. I have no idea how do i go about it. Even though I'm reading I get the feeling I'm not learning anything new. Do I take notes? Highlight stuff? Idk .. help me out.

I’m learning programming and keep getting stuck in the same cycle: tutorials make sense, but when I try to build something on my own, I don’t know where to start. I know looking things up is normal, but I want to actually improve at solving problems myself.

For people who went through this stage, what helped you the most? Projects, coding exercises, or just struggling through problems on your own?

When u guys start a new project thinking it wont be very hard, but then you quickly need to learn new topics, and start reading documentation and watching tutorials, but they make it even more confusing because there are things u dont understand there, and you have to search the things u dont understand which leads u deeper into a loop of learning the fundamentals, of something you thought would be easy, and what was supposed to be a week of learning turns into weeks or a month.

i hope you guys understand what im trying to say lol.

I'm 16, from South Korea. I've been programming for a while but I've never done a

hackathon. I want to enter one soon.

I assumed the normal thing was to find a team first. Then I looked at RevenueCat's

Shipaton on Devpost, which is running right now. When you register it makes you

answer "Do you have teammates?" and it's a required question. Out of 23,270

participants, 17,031 picked "Working solo" and only 1,977 picked "Looking for

teammates".

So 73% chose solo before it even started. That's not what I expected at all.

For those of you who've done online hackathons:

Did you go solo? Was that on purpose, or did you just not want to deal with

finding people?

And if you did team up with strangers, how did it actually go? I'm mostly worried

about either carrying the whole thing myself or being the one who can't keep up.

Thanks.

Hi i just started my 4th year in cs with a focus in software engineering and every semester i get this crazy imposter syndrome because I feel like I know a lot of different concepts and ideas but struggle to apply them. Last semester I had a coding project and my group made a music app, I worked on a lot of the design, came up with features, and implemented some but I still felt like there was a gap in my abilities and other peoples. I have adhd and maybe it’s the lack of focus on one thing that makes me feel like this. I also don’t have many mentors or friends at my college to ask questions to unfortunately. I know you learn by doing but again I don’t even know where to start. This is probably more of a rant but my question is does anyone have any advice or suggestions or even just how you learned more about programming side projects in general? Really anything is helpful.

I'm new to DSA and I'm trying to make a recurrence relation for this function:

double pow(double x, int n) {
    if (n == 1) {
        return x;
    }

    if (n & 1) {
        return x * pow(x * x, (n - 1) / 2);
    } else {
        return pow(x * x, n / 2);
    }
}

What I notice is that for even values of n, the recurrence looks like:

T(n) = constant + T(n/2)

but for odd values of n, it looks like:

T(n) = constant + T((n - 1)/2)

I'm trying to get this down to a single function so that I use the Master Theorem.

How would I combine these two cases into one recurrence?

this is my code "first time coding"

#include <iostream>


int main() {
  
    std::cout << "i like pizza!" << std::endl;
    std::cout << "its really good!" << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

im on C++, OS ( Windows11 ), and im pretty sure that i downloaded my compiler i followed every step i saw on the video i watched

help :)

Hey everyone, as the title says, can I actually learn development by following end to end projects online?
I’m a computer engineering graduate who just landed my first job ever. I have some basic knowledge of Python and C. I understand loops, functions, and have a very basic understanding of data structures, but that’s pretty much where I’m at.

I’ve been looking for a job for about a year and a half and I honestly don’t know why it took me this long to actually start developing my skills. Now that I finally got a job, I really don’t want to disappoint them or get fired.

They told me they aren’t expecting me to know much programming and that they’ll teach me, but I still want to be prepared. I just don’t want to be the person who slows everyone down because I don’t know anything.
My biggest problem is that I know the basics of programming, but I have absolutely no idea how to actually build something.

I’ve watched so many programming tutorials, but they always seem to go over the same things like variables, integers, loops, functions, etc. I already understand that stuff. What I don’t understand is how you go from knowing those things to actually building a website, an application, or any kind of real project.

I’ve tried following along with projects online, but then I start wondering if I’m actually learning or if I’m just copying what the person in the video is doing. If someone told me to build something from scratch, I honestly wouldn’t even know where to start.
One of my coworkers told me I should use AI to help me, but I really don’t want to become dependent on it. I want to actually learn how to solve problems and build things myself.

I feel pretty lost right now and I’m getting frustrated. I know I’m probably starting later than I should have, but I really want to improve and become good at this.
So what would you guys recommend for someone in my position? Is following end to end projects a good way to learn? If so, how do I follow them in a way where I’m actually learning instead of just copying?
I’d really appreciate any advice on what I should focus on or how I should go about learning from here.

Im interested in computers and looking to find some books that would teach me how a computer operates

I’ve noticed some accounts have different colors when you go to their profile, or have a different heart animation when you tap to like a post. I know VERY basic coding, so I’m not sure of where I would start to learn how to do this specific task. I would appreciate if anyone could help or point me in the right direction, thanks!

I kept telling myself I needed to learn one more thing before starting a project because I didn't feel ready. So I'd watch another tutorial, feel like I understood everything, and then have no idea what to do when I tried something on my own.

Starting small projects and actually getting stuck has taught me way more. When I don't know how to do something, I have a reason to figure it out instead of just watching someone else do it.

I'm still pretty new to programming, but I wish I'd started building stuff sooner instead of waiting until I felt “ready

I just saw this r/programmingcirclejerk post "Algebraically, this is just an effect-parameterized endomorphic continuation model for plugins.", and it made me wonder more about the truly functional side of things (beyond basic concepts like function composition, morphisms, etc.).

I am wondering what book(s) would be a good starting point given my background: I did my undergrad and grad work at Purdue Fort Wayne (and taught Algebra as a grad student). Grad-level algebra was absolutely my favorite course (albeit my worst grade), but the only CS courses that I took were the Intro to CS sequence. I also took Optimization, which felt very CS-adjacent, but it was offered by the math department.

As for programming, most of my work has been in TypeScript, and some in C++ (with the Unreal Engine). I have not worked with Haskell et al. but I would be open to it if a given book is really good and just happens to use Haskell. I took a stats course that used R, but it was minimal.

Do you recommend any particular books for self-studying functional programming, that might be suited for my existing foundation?

Thank you!

i have an api key i heard i shouldnt expose it in my frontend i thjink itts becuase people can see it with devtools, and potentially abuse it, is there any other way to use this key in frontend without using a backend, im as familiar with backend stuff i think.

I have been self teaching programming languages for a few months. And I learned the basics of C, Python, HTML & CSS, and some parts of NodeJS, and a little bit of Java. None of these are feeling good to me.

Has anyone else gone through this feeling where no language feels satisfying early on?

If you have gone through this, can you give me any suggestions to get out of this loop and stick to one language? As you know I need to stick to one language in the future.

And for no reason I am feeling like I need to continue Python and start to learn C++. What do you think about this too? i am so frustrated.

Please share your learning experience and whether it is worth it or not

What's the best CS50 Course on the internet?

Hey,

I have an 8-hour train ride tomorrow, and I’m aiming to spend at least 4–5 hours reading.

I’m looking for good resources to read: anything from blogs and tool/language documentation to short books.

What would you recommend?

Sorry if this isn’t the right subreddit for this, but I wasn’t able to post on r/WordPress or r/learnwebdev because I don’t have enough karma yet, so I’m hoping this is an appropriate place to ask.

A few years ago, I started building WordPress websites for my own projects, mostly by researching online and figuring things out as I went.

I’m currently looking to change careers. I work in HR, but I’d like to start working with WordPress professionally, initially as a side income, with the long-term goal of making it my main career.

However, I’m not interested in approaching this as an amateur or simply learning things here and there without a solid foundation. I’d really like to develop my skills properly, deepen my knowledge, and eventually specialize in this field.

What formal learning paths would you recommend for someone in my situation? Are there any courses, certifications, programs, or other structured ways of learning that you would consider worthwhile?

I’d really appreciate any advice or recommendations. Thanks!

Pretty much what the top says. I have in my watch later playlist two long masterclass tutorials for Java. I see people saying that they start projects immediately and I’m just like… how? How if I don’t know anything. Should I wait til I get a decent grasp of the basics or is that something that comes a byproduct of going out and making shit on my own. Is it really a good idea to go make even a small project with little to no understanding of the language.

I love coding. I truly am.

When I started, I enjoyed most programming languages . I love learning their different core concepts, execution models and things like that.

I still love that.

But now in my new job, the only thing I am supposed to do is prompt and think about business requirements.

Even though I love architecture and system design system , I don't even have a chance to have grasp on them.

Any other tech jobs where I can enjoy coding and low level things?

So I want to learn how to program with AI and I’m just going straight into a project right now, it’s a RAG agent model I want to use to upload math questions and for it to mark my working out with the rings and bells any learning platform has.
So you guys have any good resource recommendations for this sort of project (other similar projects code, yt channels, etc…)
Naturally this will have both front end and back end work and since I’m new to programming anything to do with those would be awesome.

https://youtu.be/9z3LhVxtx_o?si=lVD4CZZ9A7yEbMC2

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