c/coding-for-beginners

That popular 'just build things' advice for beginners misses the real struggle

I keep reading on here that beginners should just start building projects to learn coding, but yesterday I spent 3 hours on a personal project and hit a wall with basic file handling in Python that no quick tutorial could fix. The advice glosses over how frustrating it is when you don't know enough to even ask the right question on a forum. Has anyone else felt like the 'just build' mantra makes you feel behind instead of motivated?

Tried using Python's for loop to reverse a list and got garbage output

I spent an hour trying to reverse a list with a basic for loop instead of using [::-1] and ended up with a bunch of None values because I was appending in the wrong spot. Has anyone else overthought a simple slice operation and made it way harder than it needed to be?

That moment I realized I was overriding CSS with !important for everything

I spent six months building a site with fifty !important flags because I didn't understand specificity. Then a senior dev looked at my code and asked why I was fighting the browser instead of using the cascade. What was the one thing that made your coding click?

My old college buddy told me my code was too messy and I got defensive but he was right

I was showing him this script I wrote for scraping our local weather data and he just said 'dude this is like a spaghetti monster threw up on my screen'. I was annoyed at first because I spent like 3 hours on it Sunday night. But then I looked at it again and realized I had like 12 nested if statements and no comments anywhere. He showed me how to break it into functions in like 10 minutes and now I can actually read what I wrote from last week. Has anyone else had a friend call them out on bad habits and it actually helped?

Hot take: someone told me my code was "too clever" and it stung but they were right

I was using list comprehensions inside lambda functions for a beginner project and a guy in my study group said I was making it harder to debug. After the 3rd time I couldn't figure out my own code from last week, I rewrote it as simple for loops and it actually works now. Has anyone else had to dumb down their code to make it better?

Just realized Udemy courses and free YouTube tutorials give completely different results

I spent 3 months doing a $50 Udemy Python course and could follow along fine, but when I tried building my own project I was stuck. Then I switched to free YouTube tutorials that made me type everything from scratch and fix my own bugs. Which approach actually teaches you better coding skills for beginners?

Dropped $50 on a rubber duck debugging course and it actually paid off

I was stuck on a basic login loop for three days straight, just going in circles. A buddy told me to try rubber duck debugging but I needed more structure. Found a $50 Udemy course that walks you through explaining code out loud line by line to a rubber duck. My loop error got caught in under 10 minutes after I started using the method. The course also had templates for reading error logs I still use weekly. Has anyone else paid for a weird debugging tool or course that worked?

Debate: Is it worth learning framework X first or should you really start with vanilla code?

I spent 6 hours trying to fix a React state bug, only to realize I didn't understand plain JavaScript closures well enough. Would I have been better off spending those 6 months learning vanilla JS first, or is jumping into frameworks still faster for beginners? What do you think?

Found out 73% of job postings for 'entry level' dev roles ask for 2+ years of experience

I was scrolling through LinkedIn this morning and saw a study from a coding bootcamp that said most entry level coding jobs actually want people who already have a year or two of experience. That kind of blew my mind because how are you supposed to get that first job if nobody will take a chance on a true beginner? Anyone else run into this wall when applying?

I was totally wrong about learning JavaScript last year

I spent 6 months only doing HTML and CSS because everyone said JS was too hard for beginners. Then in March I finally forced myself to open a tutorial and it clicked way faster than I thought. The first thing I built was a simple to-do app that took me 4 days of trial and error. Now I look back and realize I wasted half a year being scared of nothing. What was the thing that made you finally jump into a new language or framework?

Unpopular opinion: those $500 coding bootcamps are a complete waste

I dropped $500 on a '12 week full stack bootcamp' last month thinking it would fast track me into a job. Turns out it was just a pile of outdated videos and a Discord server where no one answered questions. The instructor barely showed up and the projects were copy-paste from GitHub. I could have learned the same stuff from free YouTube tutorials in half the time. Honestly felt like I flushed my cash down the drain. Anyone else get burned by a cheap online coding course like this?

Wish someone told me about variable naming earlier

I spent 3 hours last night debugging a script because I named a variable 'data' and then reused the same name in a loop. It just overwrote everything and I couldn't figure out why my output was blank. My buddy showed me how a simple rename to 'file_data' fixed the whole thing. Has anyone else wasted a day on stupid naming mistakes like this?

Started skipping error messages at a hackathon last spring and ended up with a totally different workflow now

At the Boston Hackathon in March, a teammate told me to just ignore every red squiggle for the first hour and it actually helped me finish the MVP faster. But now I'm wondering if that's just building bad habits - anyone else have to unlearn shortcuts like that once you got serious about coding?

Stopped following tutorials line by line and my code actually compiled on the first try

I was stuck on a basic Python script for 3 weeks because I kept copying examples from YouTube and getting errors every time. Last Tuesday I forced myself to write the whole thing from scratch using only the official docs and it ran perfectly the first time. Has anyone else found that following tutorials too closely actually makes learning harder?

Spent 4 hours debugging a missing semicolon in JavaScript yesterday

A senior dev at my first hackathon told me 'stop trying to be clever'

I was stuck on a loop for 2 hours and he showed me a basic for loop in 30 seconds that worked perfectly. Has anyone else had a moment where someone made you realize simple is better?

Stayed up until 3am chasing a missing semicolon in my Python script and found 4 other bugs along the way

I was working on my first calculator program at my kitchen table last night, forgot a semicolon in line 47, and after an hour of staring at it I finally found it hidden in a messy indent pattern, so now I'm wondering does anyone else get lost in small errors like that or do you just start fresh?

Rant: I thought learning C first was a waste of time, but my professor made us do it anyway.

He said it builds a better mental model for how computers actually work, and after struggling with pointers for two weeks, something clicked. Now when I use Python, I actually understand what's happening under the hood. Do you think beginners should start with a harder language like C, or go straight to something easier?

Had to pick between learning Python or JavaScript first, and my choice backfired in a hilarious way.

Spent 3 hours yesterday trying to center a div in my first project

I finally got it after watching a YouTube video from Kevin Powell. Has anyone else had a simple CSS thing take way too long to figure out?

Went to a local library coding workshop and saw a huge mistake with the setup

I stopped by the free 'Intro to Python' class at the Westview Library last Tuesday. They had everyone, including total newbies, start by installing a full IDE and setting up a virtual environment right away. Half the room spent the whole hour stuck on errors and gave up. It was a mess and I felt bad for them. Has anyone found a better way to run that first lesson without scaring people off?

Can we talk about the push to start with Python versus JavaScript for total beginners?

I picked JavaScript over Python for my first language last year because I wanted to see results in a browser right away, and honestly, dealing with the DOM and callbacks from day one made the basics of variables and loops way clearer for me.

Shoutout to the person who told me to write a script to rename 200 files

I had a folder with about 200 image files named like 'IMG_001.jpg', 'IMG_002.jpg', and so on. I needed them to be 'product_001.jpg', 'product_002.jpg'. Doing it by hand would have taken an hour. A friend told me to look up a batch rename script in Python. I found a five line script online, ran it, and it was done in two seconds. Some people say beginners should avoid scripts and do things manually to learn the basics first. Others say solving a real problem with a few lines of code is the best way to learn. What's the better approach for a total newbie?

Walked past a local library and saw a free Python workshop for total newbies

I was heading to grab a coffee yesterday and saw a sign outside the downtown library for a 'Python for Absolute Beginners' class starting next week, no cost at all. It made me wonder if those free community classes are actually a good way to start, or if you just end up lost in a room full of people. Has anyone here tried one of those free library coding sessions and did it help?

Vent: My first Python script deleted all my vacation photos

I was working on a script in my apartment in Portland to organize files by date, and I accidentally used shutil.rmtree() instead of shutil.copytree(). It wiped my entire 'Summer 2023' folder with over 200 pictures before I realized. I panicked and spent the next 3 hours learning about file recovery tools, and I actually got most of them back using a program called Recuva. Has anyone else had a coding mistake that caused real damage, and how did you fix it?