c/coding-for-beginners

The library computer that made me quit notepad for VS Code

Last month I was at the public library in Austin working on a Python exercise, and the notepad on their old machine kept losing my indentation. A guy next to me saw what I was doing and suggested VS Code, showed me how to set it up in about 10 minutes. Now I can see syntax errors before I even run the script, which has saved me a ton of confusion. Does anyone else have a story about using a shared computer that changed how you code at home?

0 comments

claire_campbell•12d ago

Copying code from Stack Overflow got me flagged on an assignment

Back in my first month, I would paste chunks of code from Stack Overflow and just tweak variable names. It worked fine for small projects, but my professor ran some similarity checker and called me out on it. Now I type everything out by hand, even if I'm copying the logic, and I add comments in my own words to explain what each part does. Has anyone else hit this wall with academic honesty tools or is it just my school that's strict?

0 comments

the_kim•16d ago

Switched from Python to JavaScript for my first project, no regrets

I spent two months learning Python basics and was dead set on building my todo app with it. But when I showed my cousin the code, he said 'nobody hires for Python here, everything is React and Node.' That stung, but I checked local job boards and he was right, so I switched mid-project. It took me 3 weeks to redo the same app in JavaScript, but now I can actually read the job postings and understand what they want. Anyone else change languages early because of the job market where they live?

1 comments

shane_perry29•16d ago

Wasted $35 on a Python course, free YouTube videos did more

I bought this 'Python for complete beginners' course on Udemy during a sale, figured why not for $35. Turned out the instructor spent 20 minutes on setup and the examples were so basic they felt pointless. Meanwhile I found Corey Schafer's free videos and a Reddit thread that walked through building a simple expense tracker in 2 days. Has anyone else paid for a course and then found free stuff that worked way better?

1 comments

evah40•18d ago

The sales guy's shortcut made me rethink my whole workflow

At a job fair in Denver last week, a recruiter for a small startup said he watched beginners waste 6 hours trying to build a login system from scratch when there are free libraries that do it in 20 minutes. That hit me because I spent 4 days on mine last month. I realized I was treating coding like a test of memory instead of a tool to solve problems. Anyone else start out too stubborn to use other people's code?

1 comments

spencer_bell•20d ago

A 3 day Udemy course flipped how I debug code

I used to just stare at my console errors for an hour, guessing at fixes. Then I took a beginner Python debugging course that showed me to break the problem into tiny parts and print each one. Now I find the line number and solve it in 10 minutes. Has anyone else found a course that changed their workflow this fast?

1 comments

ray648•28d ago

My CSV import script crashed 200 rows in, twice

Tried to import a client's data dump into a MySQL table on Tuesday and hit a wall at row 214 both times. Turned out the file had a stray comma inside one of the address fields, something I didn't see until I opened it in Notepad++. I wrote a quick Python script to fix it, but then I realized my regex was also catching the phone numbers. Has anyone else had similar trouble with messy CSV files from older systems?

1 comments

claire_campbell•29d ago

Rant: Everyone says start with HTML but I spent 2 weeks on it and still couldn't build a real page

I was stuck in my living room in Phoenix following a Udemy course that swore HTML basics were the only way in, but after 14 days I had a folder full of tags and zero clue how to make a button actually do something. So I skipped ahead to a JavaScript beginner project where I built a simple counter app in 3 hours and it clicked way better. Why do people push HTML as a starting point when it doesn't show you anything about how code actually runs?

2 comments

wade438•1mo ago

Finally got my first CSS grid layout to work after 4 tries

I spent maybe 3 hours last night fighting with CSS grid to make a simple 3-column layout for my practice site. Kept getting weird gaps and items stacking on top of each other. Turns out I was missing a closing div tag the whole time, which was making the grid act crazy. Has anyone else spent way too long debugging something that ended up being a stupid typo?

2 comments

jordanr89•1mo ago

TIL my first React project was doomed because I skipped the basics

Spent 3 months building a todo app with React hooks and everything looked fine until I hit a bug that took me 2 days to fix. Turned out I never understood how state updates actually work in JavaScript closures. My mentor looked at my code and said 'you built a house on sand.' Anyone else jump into a framework too fast and have to go back to vanilla JS to fix your mess?

2 comments

oliviabennett•1mo ago

Hot take: restarting your project from scratch is sometimes the best debug tool, not a sign of failure

I spent 3 hours on a Saturday in my cramped apartment trying to fix a JavaScript loop that kept breaking my site, finally deleted the whole file and rewrote it in 20 minutes, so does starting over actually save time or just prove you gave up too fast?

1 comments

chen.phoenix•1mo ago

Update: I used to skip all the algorithm practice questions until a senior dev on Reddit called me out

Honestly, I thought learning sorting algorithms was a waste of time for building real apps. Then a guy in the r/learnprogramming subreddit said 'if you can't write a basic binary search from scratch, you'll never pass a FAANG interview in Austin.' That comment stuck with me. I spent 3 weekends grinding through LeetCode medium problems and now I see how they actually help break down complex logic. Has anyone else changed their mind about practicing DSA?

2 comments

the_logan•1mo ago

I finally picked Python over JavaScript for my first real project

I spent like two weeks going back and forth on which language to learn first for building a small budget tracker. I kept seeing people say JavaScript is more useful, but Python just clicked faster when I tried the tutorials. After 3 days of messing with Python loops and lists, I had a working script that tracked my $50 weekly grocery spending. It was way less frustrating than when I tried to learn JS last month and gave up on callbacks. Has anyone else had better luck sticking with one language over another for their first project?

2 comments

wadeowens•1mo ago

Github Copilot isn't helping beginners the way people claim

I was in a Discord for new coders last night and saw everyone raving about AI tools like Copilot. So I dug into a study from Pluralsight that said beginners who use AI helpers actually learn 30% slower than those who don't. It makes sense when you think about it - you just copy the suggested code without understanding why it works. Has anyone else noticed their problem solving getting worse after relying on autocomplete?

2 comments

blakem82•1mo ago

Spent $65 on a coding course that was just someone reading documentation aloud

I thought I was being smart about learning Python last month. I found a course on sale for $65 that promised to teach me web scraping in "just 5 hours." The first hour was fine, but by hour two I realized the instructor was literally reading the official requests library documentation word for word. Not explaining anything, not showing real examples, just reading paragraphs from the docs. By hour three they started doing the same thing with the BeautifulSoup docs. I wasted a whole Saturday and $65 on something I could have gotten for free on YouTube. Has anyone else run into these lazy courses that are just overpriced reading sessions?

1 comments

allen.quinn•1mo ago

Spent 6 months building a website with tables before someone told me about CSS

I started learning HTML from this old book I found at a garage sale and it showed everything using tables for layout. So for like half a year I was building page after page with nested tables, thinking that's just how you do it. Then I posted a question on Stack Overflow about why my site was so slow to load and somebody asked why I wasn't using CSS flexbox. I had no idea what that even was. It took me a whole weekend to redo my first real project but man the difference was night and day. Did anyone else learn from an outdated resource and have to unlearn everything later?

2 comments

wyatt513•1mo ago

I finally had a coding mentor tell me I was wasting my time with Python frameworks

Met this older guy at a coffee shop in Tulsa last month who's been coding since the 80s. He watched me grinding through Django tutorials and just flat out said "you're learning the wrong stuff, learn how the damn computer works first." Told me to drop frameworks, drop libraries, and just write raw Python for 6 months. Been doing it for 3 weeks now and honestly I finally understand what's actually happening when I run a script. Has anyone else had someone tell them to ditch the fancy tools and go back to basics?

2 comments

luna_jackson28•1mo ago

Had to pick between following a tutorial line by line or just messing around on my own

I spent like 2 hours on a Python tutorial last night and barely remembered anything, so this morning I just tried building a simple tip calculator from scratch. Has anyone else found that you learn way more when you ditch the guided stuff and just break things yourself?

2 comments

robinwalker•1mo ago

Spent three hours trying to deploy my first React app on Netlify and it turned out I just forgot to add the build command in the settings.

Has anyone else spent way too long debugging deployment issues only to find it was something this simple?

2 comments

the_mia•1mo ago

Tried using a for loop to rename 500 files and deleted half my data instead

I wrote a quick Python script to batch rename a bunch of photos from my vacation last week, and it ended up overwriting like 250 of them with blank names before I hit Ctrl+C. Turns out I mixed up the source and destination variables in the loop, which meant it was renaming files into each other's spots. Has anyone else had a simple script go totally sideways and lose stuff?

1 comments

luna_sanchez•1mo ago

Just realized I used to write code like a novelist instead of a programmer...

Back in my first year of learning Python, I would name every variable super long and descriptive like 'the_total_number_of_customers_that_bought_things'... took me like 10 minutes just to type one line. My buddy saw my code at a coffee shop in Portland last summer and laughed out loud. He showed me how to use short names like 'total_cust' with comments instead. Honestly I thought comments were for people who couldn't remember what their code did. Now I see the light... has anyone else gone through that phase where they overcomplicated stuff because they thought it looked more 'professional'?

1 comments

allen.ruby•1mo ago

Chat with a bootcamp grad made me question my learning path

I was talking to this guy who finished a 12 week bootcamp last month and he said he never once wrote code without following a tutorial. He couldn't build a simple to-do list from scratch. It hit me that maybe chasing tutorials is holding me back too. How do you guys force yourself to actually build things without hand holding?

2 comments

lily_ramirez4•1mo ago

Shoutout to the guy who told me to use console.log more

For the first 3 months I was learning JavaScript, I kept guessing why my code broke. I'd stare at the screen for 20 minutes before tweaking one thing. Then a guy on a forum told me to start sprinkling console.log statements everywhere to see what my variables actually held. Now I do that from the start of every script and it saves me hours. Just last week I found a typo in a loop condition in 2 minutes because I logged the counter. Anyone else have a simple habit that changed how they debug?

2 comments

evan_anderson•1mo ago

Tried React before learning proper JavaScript and it was a disaster

Honestly, I jumped straight into React after a 2-week HTML bootcamp and spent 3 days trying to figure out why my state wasn't updating. Went back and did a solid month of vanilla JS first, then React finally made sense. Anyone else make that mistake and waste a ton of time?

2 comments

leo107•1mo ago

Pulled an all-nighter debugging a single missing semicolon last month, and now I run a linter before even opening my code editor.

This happened last week with a Python script for a school project, and it would have saved me 4 hours of staring at the screen if I had just used a linter from the start has anyone else had a tiny typo ruin their whole evening?

2 comments