I begun learning programming a few years ago, and it feels like I barely progressed. I know the basics and a bit of advanced python(I have learnt to use a few libraries), html and css plus a tiny bit of c++, but not much outside of those. I enjoy programming and solving problems using code, and it’s an enjoyable hobby of mine. But I feel like all I do is extremely basic and I want to advance but it feels overwhelming seeing the countless of things I could learn.
I wanna know what are ways I can actually apply the things I have learnt/will learn on somewhat worthwhile things, because the main problem right now is that I don’t really have anything to do with the things I’ve learnt other than silly projects that don’t really last more than a day and aren’t that complex. I also want to advance my knowledge as previously stated since I feel like I know too little for the amount of time I’ve been learning to program.
For context I’m still in school but not too far off from higher ed, and I have a decent amount of free time on most days(~2-4 hrs).
Thanks if you reply
Its a tough problem. You have to find something that you want to exist; like an app or a website or a game. For example, try making a GUI for managing SSH keys. You know, like the ones github makes you create in order to clone and push to a repo. Make a visual representation of those keys (stored in the .ssh folder), and tools to add/delete them.
Along the way you’ll find tons of missing things, tools that should exist but don’t. Those are the “real” projects that will really expand your capabilities as a developer.
For example, I was coding in python and wanted to make a function that caches the output because the code was inherently slow.
- but to cache an output we need to know the inputs are the same
- hashes are good for this but lists can’t be hashed with the built-in python hash function
- we can make our own hash, but hashing a list that contains itself is hard
- there is a solution for lists, but then hashing a set that contains itself is a serious problem (MUCH harder than hashing a list)
- turns out hashing a set is the same problem as the graph-coloring problem (graph isomorphism)
- suddenly I have a really deep understanding of recursive data structures all because I wanted to a function that caches its output.
This consternation is definitely common. It’s hard to apply skills to something with no long term impact of benefit. I’ve improved my skills by finding stuff I can help on in the communities I participate in.
It’s natural to be overwhelmed, so deciding on a project does scope what you can learn, but a hard part is architecting the foundation of that project.
Introducing new features to an existing project is a great way to get your feet wet - it has multiple benefits, for one of you do take a position as a developer in the future, you likely won’t be architecting anything initially, primarily improving on existing projects. So participating in OSS projects is a similar mechanism to that - you have to learn their codebase to a degree, you have to learn their style and requirements, etc.
Even if you don’t ultimately contribute, it’s still a learning experience.
If you want to improve significantly, go read someone else’s code and modify it. Try to fix a bug in a program you use, add a feature you want that doesn’t exist already, or even just do something simple for the sake of proving to yourself that you can do it – like compiling it from source and figuring out how to change some small snippet of text in a message box. Even if you don’t succeed, if you put in a serious effort attempting it, you will almost certainly learn a lot from trying.
Edit: changed wording to try to be clearer
Leetcode is a great way to polish your skills. When I was your age, I read programming books and made projects I cared about, it’s turned out very well.
I’ve helped a few others learn programming, practice and working on any project at all always help more than anything.
My friends Leetcoded and Codeforced quite a lot. Advent of Code is up there too, with the interesting caveat that Advent of Code also teaches you refactoring (due to the two-part nature of every problem).
However, when I was younger I had contempt for the whiteboard-problem-esque appearances of these, but everyone is different.
If you look hard enough there is always a project at medium difficulty – not way too hard, like a huge project you feel won’t give you returns – not way too easy, like some cowsay clone. Ever tried making a blog? You can host for free on most Git pages implementations (codeberg, github, gitlab…).
As for programming books, consider trying security books like Art of Exploitation – in the same strain, CTFs can use a decent amount of code, and they’re fun in terms of raw problem-solving. I started with the Bandit wargame, which does Linux problem solving from any machine that has SSH.
I’m not by any means a l33t hax3r but I found them pretty fun in my learning journey.
Codewars is a cool leetcode-esque thing with less of the corporate dystopia sheen.
I like to pick a fun project, pick a language I don’t know / wanna learn better, and then just go for it. Don’t be discouraged if somebody’s already made it - nothing says your learning project has to be useful in the real world, tho it’s kinda nice if you think of something that can be. If your project seems intimidatingly hard, remember the programmer workflow of breaking it down into manageable pieces and tackling those. If it doesn’t seem hard enough to teach you anything, I sometimes like to write it without using any external code or libraries (or a minimum of them; if it’s something like a GUI program I’ll use direct vulkan bindings instead of like Qt). This is also one of the few areas I get some use out of LLMs, cuz bullying ChatGPT or a local equivalent into giving me huge and tailored lists of program ideas can be really helpful. Either way my main advice is just to pick something that interests you and have fun with it; things don’t have to be worthwhile to other people to be worthwhile to you.
Read/Inspect and contribute to FOSS. They’ll be bigger and longer lived than small, personal, and experimental projects.
Study computer science.
Work, preferably in an environment with mentors, and long-/continuously-maintained projects.
Look at alternative approaches and ecosystems. Like .NET (very good docs and guidance), a functional programming language, Rust, or Web.
That being said, you ask about “should”, but I think if it’s useful for personal utilities that’s good enough as well. Depends on your interest, goals, wants, and where you want to go in the future.
For me, managing my clan servers and website, reading online, and contributing to FOSS were my biggest contributors to learning and expertise.
Seconding the FOSS advice from the perspective of a fellow learner.
I’m a scientist first and foremost, so I’m learning programming on the side. A lot of code that’s written by scientists is pretty grim, so attempting to understand and contribute to FOSS projects has been useful in understanding how a complex project is organised, and how to read code as well as write it.
Contributing can be pretty small, even opening a git issue for a problem, or adding some info to an existing issue. You won’t be able to just dive in and start solving problems all over, and it can feel overwhelming to try as a relative beginner, but it massively improved my skills.
Multi-Account Containers extension is looking for more contributors
https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/discussions/2672
This is me wondering… is there anyone who curates and categorizes lists of open source projects actively looking for contributions? Possibly with an organization based on experience level? It’s often hard to tell what project are active enough that entry, intermediate, or experienced level help is needed and for what.
Obligatory Linux comment (Lemmy moment):
Windows is used often for its compatibility and defaultness but Linux is interesting in the sense that everything is patchable, everything is tinkerable and configurable. The low resistance to tinkering makes lots of Linux users tinkerers – including tinkering via code.
I’m not saying wipe your hard drive or even dual-boot. Maybe an older computer or VM could help, depending on what you have. But just in the past week I’ve screwed around in low-to-medium-difficulty Linux projects that configured my lockscreen with C, that implemented mildly usable desktop GUIs with TypeScript, among others – just not-too-committal stuff that has a return value I literally see every time I lock my computer.
Windows equivalent projects can be harsher on the beginning-to-intermediate curve (back when I first tried out Linux Mint, I’d been struggling to make a bookmark inspector in Visual Studio – ended up Pythoning it instead) – not to say that Windows fun is by any means out-of-reach.
You need to think of things you might want to build. Try building software that nobody ever has, try fixing issues in current software using git. You can find lots of python program in GitHub, waiting for contributions. That’s how I learnt. If you want to learn and use C++, try building software that interacts with the real world with Arduino, try contributing to the Linux kernel or try making simple games using C++ in Godot.
I did actually make a game in godot but it was mostly based on a tutorial and little of my own inpuy
Then use what you learnt from that tutorial and make something similar or entirely new, without tutorials.
I found reading through the rust book was a nice walkthrough of problems one can hit and how that language elected to solve them.
In terms of practice:
- Write a vim config
- Shell out to python if you’d like
- Learn a bit of elisp and org-mode
- Rewrite all your shell scripts into a python CLI
- Write a pyqt6 GUI for tasks and notes on the exact way you’ve always wanted it to work
- Write an AI tool to auto-format links etc with phi3
- Very exciting how much these smaller models can do!
- Write a vim config
Does your school have a robotics team or something along the lines of computing? That would be a good option. Also if you are still in high school and plan on going to college, you still have plenty of time to learn.
You can try to write programs you think would be a challenge for you (but still doable at your skill level). Write some games, bots that solve simple games like Tic Tac Toe or mods for your favourite (moddable) games. If you own a Raspberry Pi you could play around with the DPIO. Your free time projects are usually nothing too exciting or world-changing and that’s perfectly fine, they don’t have to be; the worthwhile part about them will be the practice they’ll offer.
Alternatively, you could try reading some theory, learn different types of data structures, sorting algorithms or pathfinding algorithms and their respective strengths and weaknesses. Or go deeper and prepare for higher Edu in CS by looking into the maths fundamentals, learn some linear algebra, discrete math, analysis or basic graph theory, it will help you a lot.
Edit: graph theory, not knot theory
You could try to find an open source project to contribute to? That’ll get give you a nice big codebase to grapple with.
I propose you contribute to Foss software that you use.
With that you are motivated because you are invested in the project, you will see the effect of your work and you learn about the process of contributing and working in a team.
That should keep you going for a while. Best of luck.
The way I did it is by trying to solve more and more advanced problems with simpler tools/features, then looking at more advanced features and seeing where they could be applied to make the problem solving simpler. Rinse and repeat.
An easy example that I can remember is making arrays that dynamically expand. I started with the barebones malloc and worked out how to use std::vector (and other list types) in its place.
Understanding that concept is, what I believe, to be the foundation of learning programming.
I’m no pro whatsoever, but using this method really helps me pick up and learn new languages.
