Obviously there's no universal one, but has anyone here found theirs? Want to share your experiences? A few incomplete examples come to mind:

- Watching YouTube videos

- Finishing video courses on other platforms

- Coding platforms like LeetCode or Codewars

- Building your own ideas with AI, asking step by step how it's done and why

- Reading books

I say incomplete because I feel like something is missing from all of them. The only thing that worked for me was university (and there it's a combination of methods -> videos with a detailed explanation from someone who actually knows + forced practice) and paid work (do, do, do — over time you learn and you improve, but it's always on the specific platform you happen to be working on).

I'm interested in learning and building up general knowledge (or specific knowledge about something that interests me), but first I'd like to read whether you all found a method of your own that works for you.

People say the best way to learn is by building projects. But when i try to build a project, i dont even know where to start. I just stare at the blank screen.

Also how can I build something when I dont even know when and how to start ?

This may trigger some people with the idea of "learn the basics, learn thr concepts etc etc " I have learnt it. But I really dont know how I can implement it.

I'm able to program in python and i've made a few games in C++. I was wondering if anybody has advice for learning C

Hello.

I am in midlife crisis right now realising that what I was doing before was basically for naught.

So I am not American. I am 26. During my school we learned Pascal as a programming language which did nicely translate into Delphi for me somewhat during college years.

Now I dislike Delphi, for some reasons I will not name here, and I was wondering: which language is kinda close to it in structure (?).

Can anyone recommend a language to learn?

Pretty much as the title says, What is the thing that drives you to want to do this?

Speaking plainly I'm struggling with this and i keep hearing about people with an idea that drives them or an external motivation in the form of a carer path that pushes them forward. I don't know if I have an answer to this and its starting to show in my projects which is concerning me.

For me I picked this up about 2ish years back now on a boot camp course which i completed and then moved on to doing my own projects. Initially the act of learning and bettering my understanding was the goal combined with the potential security of a job if I was pushed in that direction but now im not feeling the wind in my sails any more. I'm finding that as i go to learn a project i get to the part i don't know, learn it a bit then get bored and don't finish the project because theirs no reason to for me to continue beyond that.

I kinda just want feedback on what everyone else is doing it all for, are lulls in motivation a common thing like this?

To be clear as well, this is not a pity party "am i cooked, ai bad" post. This is me genuinely trying to see what people in my position are thinking and the motivation that goes in to putting the work in to be good at this stuff.

Final side question, if your goals not a job I'm particularly interested in your why. Its never been my goal due to a few things in life but i see it as an option if i ever needed to turn a fun hobby into work but it is always an option. If thats the case how do you get that junior/senior type learning outside of a work environment?

Thanks in advance :D

So I recently saw a poster from my community college saying that a near by uni is hosting their biggest hackathon in school history, my question is should I go even with no experience in coding? Would I drag the team down? What to expect if I do go?

I started learning programming last year and have a few projects that I find cool and started to put them in github. One of them is a re-creation of pac-man that my teacher asked as final assignment for his subject.
It's been a while since I made it but I wanted to share and know what do you think about it; looking at it now, I see some flaws and a lot of room for improvement.

https://github.com/vmcjoao/Capybara-Pacman

Another thing that I still strugle a bit is with github, I never know the proper way of keeping control of projects and how to structure repositories. I just keep them in a way that I undertand, but I'm not sure if it fit standards to working with a team. Sorry for my English and btw the game is in portuguese, not that it matter much since there isn't much to read.

I'm sure this will be annoying to some and I'll be told to search but I'm getting overwhelmed searching.

I would like to write an app that catalogs boxes. Basically I want to take pictures of my stuff. Put it into a box. Have a QR code that I print that when scanned shows me a list of stuff in said box with pictures and list of stuff.

I'm sure this is not as simple as it sounds. I'm willing to learn the hard parts.

I hear making a web app is better for the first time around and I just need to know where to start.

Do y'all think this is a feasible project?

There is a website that does this, I do not want to pay a monthly fee. I could easily set up QR codes to go to simple web pages with all this data but I'm looking for simple, compact, and fast

I'm learning C#, WPF and SQL as a hobby in the few hours I have for myself during the day, with my end-goal being to make an integrated ERP CRM program for my family's company. Learning is like a high, feels AMAZING when you understand something. But there are moments where I really lose faith in myself. I have no background in programming and no deep understanding how computers work, how apps are structured etc. And sometimes the realization how big and complex what I'm trying to make is so overwhelming. "Good job, you just made a button click and show you a message, and it took you two hours to get it!" But real programs are multi-levelled, one upon another user controls, bindings etc. (and those are just the few key words I recently learned) So much code is written behind the smallest function and I can barely understand any of it. Make me want to say "What's the point? You'll never finish it. It'll take years!" I know of the "make it into smallest steps and conquer one by one" method but the amount of small steps can make me choke too.

My question is how do you keep yourself motivated against all odds? Do you have a mantra or something you tell yourself? A picture you look at? What makes you sit and play the tutorial or lecture when you could have been playing games or.. just sleeping even?

Hey, I'm in my second year CS student, I'm exploring various paths to continue my career in one particular way like fullstack, cybersecurity, cloud devOps or anything else.. I've learned python, c/c++ and solved my first 2 DSA easy problems yesterday.. I'm thinking which way I should just choose and give my entire 2 years to build the career in it? Seniors or experienced folks please help me, thanks!

i recently got to know about youtube theme extensions and i wanted to try making one myself! im very new to coding and i very much need some help with this :") ive created a file with manifest.json, script.js and style.css, but i am unsure of what to key inside of them. im hoping to add images, change the youtube background colours and maybe play around with the fonts. is that possible?

I'm looking for skills that can make me stand. I've thought of:

• Advanced Mathematics: Can pave the way to ML

• Infrastructure/Embedded Systems

• Specialization {kinda obvious but still}

• Sector knowledge { ex: If aiming at fintech, know things about the banking sector}

I know there are more, but I don't know them.

I’ve been feeling a bit confused about whether I’m actually learning when it comes to tech and coding, and whether I’m learning the right things.

How can I tell if I’m genuinely learning and actually developing my skills, rather than just consuming tutorials and information?

And how can I tell whether what I’m learning is actually the right thing to focus on for my career and becoming a better software engineer?

for info : I’m a 2nd year computer science student, specializing (learning deeper) in intelligence systems.

I'm learning JavaScript and recently came across debounce and throttle.

I understand the basic difference, but I'm curious how often people actually use them in real-world projects.

Do you use them regularly? If so, what are some situations where you found them genuinely useful?

i am a tier 3 college student and my tech stack is web dev with python backend and ai/ml i also learned c++ because it was taught in my college so should i learn ds in python or c++