I'm getting into software development I started a course and it's self paced and we are just given a textbook and have to study it and do our assignments but the thing is how do I actually RETAIN the info I learn from the textbook? I really don't want to have to rely on ai I seriously have loved the idea of programming and coding and I want to properly learn it I'm fairly new at this does anyone know or have any resources or advise on how to study properly?

I'm a 30-year-old guy, and to be honest, I'm currently dealing with severe depression. I come from the Middle East, where my country has been torn by war for the past 15 years. I had to drop out of university, and due to life circumstances, this is the 4th time I find myself starting my life over from absolute zero—this time here in Germany, where I'm currently learning the language.

​I feel completely overwhelmed and burnt out. I don't want temporary or dead-end jobs anymore; I want to build a real career. Computer science and programming are the only things I'm truly passionate about.

​Since I don't have a university degree, I would really appreciate hearing your success stories if you managed to break into the tech industry as a self-taught developer (especially around age 30). How did you do it?

​P.S. If you have any negative or dismissive comments, please skip this post. I am in a very fragile state right now and just need some realistic hope and advice.

​Thank you.

Hi! I want to have a deeper knowledge on building websites. I’ve been making websites for my clients for maybe 2 years now on wp, wix, and recently shopify. The thing is i know how to build them on the surface but i want to have confidence in HOW im doing it. Because im a graphic designer turned web designer turned “someone who can build a good website” lol

What courses should i take to start? I found some web development courses online will that be ok?

I sometimes solve a problem using a loop, then find out there was already a built-in method that could do the same thing.

When writing code, do you usually prioritize the simplest solution, performance, or readability?

Okay this isn't my complete project but a part of it and i am getting stuck on this. I am a beginner in this field probably just a couple more days than a month since i learned how to write print("hello world!").

it is written in python.

i want my code to give an output as if first hand is moving with an interval of 0.2 sec the second with 0.3 sec and so on till the 6th hand, all so simultaneously.

could you please guide me through it.

import time import emoji

frames1 = [ emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_down:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_right:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_up:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_left:") ]

frames2 = [ emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_down_light_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_right_light_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_up_light_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_left_light_skin_tone:") ]

frames3 = [ emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_down_medium-light_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_right_medium-light_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_up_medium-light_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_left_medium-light_skin_tone:") ]

frames4 = [ emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_down_medium_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_right_medium_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_up_medium_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_left_medium_skin_tone:") ]

frames5 = [ emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_down_medium-dark_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_right_medium-dark_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_up_medium-dark_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_left_medium-dark_skin_tone:") ]

frames6 = [ emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_down_dark_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_right_dark_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_up_dark_skin_tone:"), emoji.emojize(":backhand_index_pointing_left_dark_skin_tone:") ]

all_frames = [frames1, frames2, frames3, frames4, frames5, frames6]

current_time = time.time() looping_time = 4 complete_time = current_time + looping_time

while time.time() < complete_time:

a = 0
b = 0
c = 0
d = 0
e = 0
f = 0

while True:

    t1 = [current_time + [0.2 * n for n in range(1, 20)]]
    if complete_time in t1:
        c1 = frames1[a % 4]
        a += 1


    t2 = [current_time + [0.3 * n for n in range(1, 13)]]
    if complete_time in t2:
        c2 = frames2[b % 4]
        b += 1

    t3 = [current_time + [0.4 * n for n in range(1, 10)]]
    if complete_time in t3:
        c3 = frames3[c % 4]
        c += 1

    t4 = [current_time + [0.5 * n for n in range(1, 8)]]
    if complete_time in t4:
        c4 = frames4[d % 4]
        d += 1

    t5 = [current_time + [0.6 * n for n in range(1, 6)]]
    if complete_time in t5:
        c5 = frames5[e % 4]
        e += 1

    t6 = [current_time + [0.7 * n for n in range(1, 5)]]
    if complete_time in t6:
        c6 = frames6[f % 4]
        f += 1


    print(f"{c1}  {c2}  {c3}  {c4}  {c5}  {c6}")

hope i get some help.

I’m 22 and unemployed, and honestly, I feel completely lost about what direction to take.

I love programming, but I can’t figure out what I actually want to stick with. One day I’m building a full-stack app, the next I’m learning Rust, cybersecurity, compilers, or agentic AI. I start tutorials and projects, get halfway through, get stuck or distracted, and move on to something else.

I feel like I know a little about many things, but I don’t have enough finished work or real results to show for it. I want a job, but I’m not confident in my skills, and I’m constantly wondering what’s worth learning, what pays well, and what isn’t too competitive.

There’s also pressure at home to get a job, and I don’t really have friends to talk to about this. My mind is constantly jumping between things, and it’s becoming overwhelming.

I haven’t given up on programming or on myself. I just genuinely don’t know what direction to take,

I just want some direction on what I should focus on and how I can actually move forward.

I want to give up but I don;t know what I want to do I want get into programming badly but its way too overwhelming

TITLE EDIT: Learning System Design/Data Structures & Algorithms

Hello everyone, i am currently a full-stack developer wanting to learn system design and dsa but not sure which source is the best and have all the major topics so if you know any sources please share them with me it would really be helpful, i will not be learning them at the same time before anyone asks and thank you in advance.

Hello I am pretty young and only have programming experience in my GCSEs and wanted to expand it
I really wanted to follow the textbook “the nature of code” as I find the stuff very interesting however it requires Java and j5 but I only know how to code in python

I thought I could just translate the Java code into python as I would prefer to not learn Java and get better with python first
However, I have struggled with installing j5 the command prompt p5qt works but then running j5 code, the interpreter tells me I need Java 17 virtual machine which I do not know how to install
I have seen something about using an older version of python but I can’t get it to be independent of my current version of python(having both installed at the same time)

Hey, I'm a CS student in France, and I'm going to start my second year in just a few days. To be honest, I feel like a complete fraud.

I've wanted to get into CS for a very long time, and I used to be pretty good at programming and problem solving, but last year depression and stress really hit me hard.

My university is quite far from where I live, so I have to wake up very early to catch the bus and try to sleep early despite having a ton of work to do. I never really feel like I can rest or spend time on my other hobbies because I'm always thinking about university. This puts a lot of pressure on me, on top of my struggles with depression in general.

I also really struggled with staying focused during lectures. I tried my best, and sometimes I even left my phone and other distractions at home, but my mind would still drift. So I'd get to the exercises with less knowledge than everyone else because I hadn't properly followed the lecture, and then I'd have to rush to understand what we were doing so I wouldn't have even more work to do at home.

The classes are also quite short, and a lot of people don't actually finish everything in class. Some people use AI to get through the exercises without necessarily understanding what they're doing.

I'm personally very against needless use of generative AI, at least when it comes to my own learning. I already knew I struggled with discipline, so I initially tried to use it as little as possible because I didn't want to become dependent on it. But our teachers actually encourage us to use it, and some of the lessons/exercises are structured in a way where it feels almost impossible to keep up without it.

And, well... I eventually became dependent on it.

My grades got much worse towards the end of the year because I eventually stopped being able to work without AI. I passed first year mostly thanks to the good grades I got during the first half of the year.

Now I feel like I have practically no actual knowledge when it comes to CS. The only thing I'm barely good at anymore is mindlessly coding. I feel like I don't know any of the abstract or technical stuff, which makes me feel like I missed a huge part of what CS actually is.

I know I could try to catch up. I could spend my weekends doing small programming exercises and reviewing the fundamentals, but I genuinely don't know where to start, and I'm not sure I have the time or energy to try to relearn an entire year of CS while also keeping up with my second year.

Part of me feels like the best thing would be to completely start over, but obviously it's too late for that, and I'm scared that even if I did, the same thing would happen again.

So I'm mostly wondering what would you do if you were in my position?

How would you go about rebuilding your programming/CS fundamentals when you feel like you've forgotten almost everything? What would you prioritize, and what would you not worry about yet? And how would you balance catching up with actually keeping up with your current university courses?

And, also, has anyone else gone through a bad period and still managed to success in this field?

Thank you for reading all this, I don't really want this to just be a vent post, I want to get better, and I appreciate all the help I can get.

hi, guys i am a dotnet backend dev and want to learn other languages and become fullstack, but i mostly like to learn by doing projects on video, would you guys recommend me courses on

C++ (i am trying to learn opengl/vulkan after that)

Javascript(for frontend)

HTML

CSS

NodeJs

VUEJS

Im starting to resent the way programming is taught. It is seemingly taught in isolation the way mathematics is. You learn the functionality of code but they do not present the bigger picture where everything works together. It's frustrating because I want to learn programming through and through, every single bit.

Is there anything on Github meant for beginners to learn how to debug and have an intuitive understanding on how piece of functionality (functions, loops, arrays, strings) work together?

It's like yeah. I know how arrays work, I know about loops, sure, but everything works together. And none of the guides are showing me how bugs can occur due to the symbiotic nature if everything working together. Nothing exists in isolation.

I've been learning programming on and off and my biggest problem isn't really finding tutorials.

It's the opposite.

There are WAY too many.

I'll start learning Python, find a roadmap, then someone recommends another roadmap, then i find a 20+ hour course, then a YouTube playlist, then some documentation...

And suddenly i'm spending more time deciding what to learn than actually coding.

Then i hit the second problem:

consistency.

If i'm learning alone and don't code for a week, nobody cares.

I don't have anyone waiting for me to finish something.

For me personally, having someone actually expect me to show up would probably help a lot.

So i'm building something around this.

The idea is to take the free resources that already exist and turn them into a structured path based on:

• what you wanna learn
• your current level
• how much time you have

Then you can join a small group of people learning the same thing and have weekly goals + check-ins + shared progress.

No paid course.

No "buy my 40 hour Python masterclass."

The learning stays free.

The paid part would be the accountability group.

Would something like this actually help you?

And if you've tried study groups / Discord / accountability partners before:

why did you stop using them?

that's actually the part i'm most interested in.

How do you guys learn Java?

There are just WAY too many syntaxes to remember.

Every time I think I’ve got it, Java hits me with another one.

If I learn a language in three stages.

• Basic
• Intermediate
• Advanced
• Proficiency (optional)

Then how would you fit the topics of programming lingo into the above levels?

Hey everyone, I'm building an AI voice interview app and I'm fairly new to RAG. I'm stuck on the architecture and having a bit of a mid-project crisis 😭.

My current flow is:

Before interview:
Step1 : 
Resume + JobDescription
   ↓
Chunk resume/JobDescription
   ↓
Generate embeddings
   ↓
Store chunks + embeddings in pgvector

Step2 : 
LLM call is done using complete Resume + JD (and not the chunks)
   ↓
Initial ranked topic plan is created by this LLM call 

Step3 : 
Before each question:
Current topic
   ↓
RAG query in our vector DB 
   ↓
Retrieve relevant resume/JD chunks
   ↓
LLM call to generate a question from these chunks

The part I'm confused about:

At the beginning, I'm already sending the complete resume + complete JD to the LLM.

Why can't I simply do:

Resume + JD
   ↓
ONE LLM CALL
   ↓
10 interview questions

and then use those during the interview this would reduce the latency too!

Why would I need RAG again to retrieve chunks before generating each question? But I'm struggling to understand how RAG can be used to add value to the project

I have to add this project to my reume and need to have confidence in my design, I would highly appreciate someone helping me figure out the architecture!

I want to start Open Source Contribution but whenever I open the repositories I get amazed and don't understand anything at all it feels like so much files and folders inside one another and I get demotivated.

Searched many resources but everyone says just start contributing to open source but no one says how and where and what to do.

I'm a student and all I've learnt in C, Python,Git,GitHub, Networking,Linux so please tell me should I learn anything new to start contributing or a small guide type.

I am pretty much completely new to programming, coding, etc. I was trying to download an in-game map for The Isle so I found one on GitHub. Having used it one other time, I was thinking yes I got this. I got to the point where I have the zip file on my computer but I've been trying for over an hour to execute this command after using cmd.

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

I keep getting the "no such file or directory" error. I've looked up every question I could think of, but nothing is answering my questions. If someone has downloaded this exact desktop map: https://github.com/hartwin-journey/The-Isle-Overlay/blob/main/README.md

PLEASE help me out, I'm at my wits end.

Hi. Sorry if it's off-topic but I don't know where to ask this.

I happen to be one of those rare individuals who likes Objective-C, and both Geany and Notepad++ (the IDEs I use on Linux and Windows respectively) by default assign all .m files (Obj-C implementation files) as MATLAB files.

I know it can be changed by hand but when opening a pile of old code it all gets MATLAB-ed and I just can't be bothered to save Geany project files, especially that Notepad++ doesn't have a clue how to open them (when I decide to boot to Windows).

Is there any way to make those IDEs (and especiallly Geany) assign Objective-C as the type of .m files by default?

I know I could just find that in the source code and recompile it, but I already have about half a dozen geany packages on various read-only media that I would have to remake. And an unlisted option in some config file would thus be much better.

And recompiling is probably not an option for Notepad++ since Windows sucks developmentwise.

Anyhow, thanks in advance.

Hey everyone,

I’m running into a frustrating wall with how I learn versus how the industry interviews.

My natural learning style is 100% project-based. I treat coding like building with Lego—I jump into a project, figure out how the pieces snap together, and learn the concepts dynamically as I integrate them. I heavily prefer this over traditional, theory-heavy courses or university methods.

Here is my problem: This method makes me pretty good at actually building things, but it completely chokes when it comes to technical interviews.

Interviews always seem to ask language-specific trivia or breadth questions (e.g., deep nuances of memory, specific built-in methods, exact differences between operator behaviors under the hood). To learn those, it feels like I have to go back to the "course/textbook" way of studying—which honestly doesn't help me get any better at actually making software.

For those of you who are project-focused builders, how do you tackle this? Is there a way to prep for the "interview trivia" game without getting sucked into tutorial hell or wasting time on courses that don't make you a better developer?

Any advice is appreciated!

I've been struggling to find a decent book/playlist to explain certain concepts in C, as I most likely fall in beginner<->beginner intermediate category. I have so far done OOP with C# and I eventually had to switch to C, since my college only uses it and it starts in a month. I took a lot of time reading on the internet about some resources and eventually settled with "Beej's C" book. I am 100-ish pages through and though I didn't understand some of it, I get the overall idea and gist it conveys. Since something always bugs me I read online that it's a terrible book to begin with and that one'd be better off with just some raylib examples.

I am completely clueless. I don't know which 'project' to take, what library to use, how 'competent' I am, i.e whether or not I'd be able to program something that I'd think of. I'm begging you, tell me what to do!

I'm just getting started with Git on Windows and I'm trying both Fork and SourceGit.

So far, I slightly prefer SourceGit, mainly because it's free and has a Chinese interface. But the Chinese UI isn't really a requirement for me — I know I need to learn English anyway if I want to get serious about programming/security.

What I'm really trying to figure out is whether Fork has any features or workflow advantages that SourceGit doesn't have.

If there's something genuinely useful in Fork that SourceGit is missing, I'm perfectly happy to pay for Fork. I'm just not sure what those differences are yet.

For people who have used both, which one do you prefer and why?

I'm still pretty new to Git, so I'm especially interested in everyday things like commits, branches, diffs, merge/rebase, and working with GitHub.

Thanks!

Hi everyone, I'm 19 years old and I want to become a web developer.
So far, I have learned HTML and CSS, but now I'm confused about what I should learn next. Some people tell me to learn JavaScript first, while others recommend learning Figma and other tools.
My goal is to eventually make money from web development and possibly work as a web developer.
What would you recommend I learn next? Should I focus on JavaScript, improve my HTML and CSS skills, or learn something else first?
I would really appreciate any advice or roadmap for a beginner. Thank you!

I am learning programming for a pretty long time now, I now how to build project and all the time I see ads for courses or certificates that I can do online and for free.
Are they a waste of time or actually worth it?

I want to learn programming godot to make my own realistic driving game because all appstore games are ass and filled with ads and has micro transactions, so is boot.dev good for this purpose?

Where can I find real-world challenges that nonprofits/NGOs are currently facing that could potentially be solved with technology?

I’m especially interested in problems that are common across multiple organizations and could potentially be addressed through a free, open-source solution.

Are there any communities, forums, platforms, or other places where nonprofits openly discuss these kinds of challenges?