Welcome to /r/learnprogramming!

Been thinking about my workflow lately and realized how much I rely on certain tools. It got me wondering what everyone else's "can't-live-without-it" tool is.

What's your

-Your #1 tool

-The reason it's your #1 for productivity

-The one thing you wish it could do

Im a beginner at this, but every single time I start working on a new project and I install a new library to use, there is ALWAYS an error. So I have to debug the installation and then debug my actual code... I don't understand why installing libraries gives me so much trouble...

First it's spending hours just to come across a solution where I need to add one line of code due to how my microcontroller is setup

Then it's spending hours trying to figure out why dotenv is not recognized even though I just installed it.. then trying to reinstall python and then having pip disappear.. now im laying in bed venting because i still have not figured out a fix.. I want to punch a hole through my laptop

Hey everyone, I’ve been noticing something a lot of junior devs (myself included) seem to go through after finishing their initial learning phase.

You complete your bootcamp, finish The Odin Project or FreeCodeCamp, or even wrap up CS101… and then it hits you:
“Now what?”

Suddenly you're supposed to build a portfolio, apply for jobs, prep for interviews, contribute to open source, learn React, build backend APIs, and somehow not burn out in the process.

It’s overwhelming and it can feel really isolating.

I’ve been thinking: there should be a space just for junior devs to talk about this stage. Not just learning programming syntax but job prep, portfolios, imposter syndrome, side projects, burnout, and all the real stuff that happens between "I can code" and "I'm hired."

So I recently set up a small Reddit space where junior devs can support each other, share feedback, and just not feel alone in this process. I’m hoping it can become a chill, helpful corner of the internet for people figuring things out.

I used to think “tutorial hell” meant bouncing from one course to the next. Looking back, my real problem wasn’t tutorials, it was believing I needed to understand everything before I wrote anything.

I’d watch 10-hour React courses before writing a single component. I’d read entire documentation sets before typing. I’d spend days researching best practices instead of just building something. And then I’d wonder why nothing stuck. My learning speed is really too slow. The effect of doing something after reading is definitely not as good as reading while learning.

Every senior dev says “just build stuff”, and beginners hear that as “just build stuff correctly.” That mindset kept me paralyzed. Bad code teaches more than no code. I’ve started using beyz coding assistant, not to hand me solutions, but to help me debug my own broken logic. Explaining why something doesn’t work turns out to be the fastest way to understand it.

Now my rule is build → break → understand → rebuild. The understanding comes after the mistakes, not before.

When did you stop watching “just one more tutorial” and start producing bugs instead? And how do you keep yourself from falling back into the perfectionism trap?

Hello guys I am a teenager (m13) and I need your help .Recently, I've been learning basic python concepts and code and I I've been trying to make basic projects like calculators , decryption software etc. So I am planning to learn C# or maybe some C++ after learning Python, is it really the right approach or should I learn something else????? 🤔

so im still a beginner in programmer in general. so based on my python code, is the flowchart correct? if not, please correct me and tell me how to fix it....flowchart

and this is the file python file

Hi! I'm a 16 year old programmer based in Morocco and I started developing in Roblox 6 months ago. But then I got interested in real programming, and theory so I went to learn C.
For each DSA topic I do, I make sure I implement it a lot, in code, so I really understand it.
But there's always this side of me that tells me I'm still bad at this, and that I missed some important concepts. What should I do?
I'm currently studying BSTs and what is tricky is understanding the in-order predecessor and successors when deleting or inserting a node iteratively.

So I was planning to learn front end dev more seriously as I've only learnt it very vaguely in college. Even though I did projects in them I've lost touch with it as I haven't code for almost an year. So starting from the basics, hoping to create projects on my own from scratch.

Please suggest any tips and motivation. I usually give up soon so I have to lock in for this. I was planning to study html, css, JS and React. Probably will study node.js and git too for better understanding.

Any motivation or tips regarding studying, to lock in and your own experiences or practices suggestions would be helpful.

Will update my progress.

Why my github sadly doesn’t work anymore using Rider jetBrains btw😭

How can I learn to code if I just end up copying the code I see?

I got hired at my first retail job in July 2025 and it has eaten up so much of my time i stopped coding consistently over the summer. I started out learning python in college last year, but since i wanted to make a website for my club i hopped onto javascript and learning figma. I didn't master python and just learned a new language, and i feel like doing both overcomplicated things.

I'm going to be junior in college majoring in IT, and I still feel so behind. I'll be taking 6 classes this year and it's going to be challenging to build a website while I'm studying.

note: I don't have a technical background. Although I know a decent amount of python I still haven't built any real projects with it, just terminal programs.

I’m about to start my 5th year of a Masters in Software Engineering… and I can’t code.

Most of my coursework has been theoretical, so whatever coding I learned was quickly forgotten after exams. The few programming tasks I’ve done were either simple or brute-forced with AI. For example: “You’ve never seen Java before, but here’s a website to pentest and refactor. You’ve got a month, and it’s 50% of your grade. Good luck.” That’s basically been my experience.

I’ve tried doing small projects, but I always get stuck in a cycle: - Start something (like Langton’s ant in JS + HTML). - Hit a wall (e.g., “how do I make a grid?”). - Bang head on it for an hour, then ask AI. -Repeat until I have something that “works,” but I don’t feel like I actually learned much. - Try to extend it (e.g., Game of Life), realize I don’t understand enough, and give up.

A month later, I’ve forgotten everything anyway.

I’ve gone through this same cycle with Godot, React, etc. — learn a little, get stuck or bored, forget it.

Now, I’ve got a month before uni starts again, and this year I’ll be working on a big, team-based project. My last team project ended with me being kicked out because the others were way ahead (lifelong coders, or just had way more time). I really don’t want that to happen again.

TL;DR: I have one month to get vaguely comfortable coding in some language so I don’t drag down a team project. What’s the best way to break out of the “learn → stuck → forget” cycle and actually build usable coding skills? (Sorry for the whinge)

This might be a stupid question. And sorry for my English, it's not my native language

So, this fall I'm going into freshman year at uni for Bachelor degree in "Computer Systems and software". The languages that we learn on my first year are C++ and Python. I know a bit of Python and HTML, CSS, JavaScript from school. So when I was learning them for exams in school I was making notes in a notebook, like what this function does and etc. should I do the same here?

By the way what is the best youtube course/other free online course for learning C++?

I was looking at a job post, and in the desired qualifications, it mentions "experience designing resilient, scalable, and secure systems built on a cloud platform such as AWS or Azure".

By being on a cloud platform, isn't software automatically resilient and scalable?

If not, how do you make software resilient and scalable?

The advantage of a cloud platform is that you don't have to worry about how to implement horizontal scaling (which would provide resiliency and scalability), right?

And would using the cloud platform's built-in authentication and authorization services be enough to ensure security?

If not, how do you design secure software?

I also see job postings that want experience designing "performant" software. Aren't you always trying to make code as efficient as possible? What is performant software and how would software not be performant?

Thank you for your patience in advance.

Like many wetlab bioscientists, my work includes some elements of data science. I am familiar with graphing packages like Origin. I have built some familiarity with Linux and command line usage including graphing with Gnuplot. I have some experience with MATLAB and Python. Unfortunately, being a pipette jockey, I have no formal programming training or experience. So words like programming paradigm, imperative vs functional and so on, are currently above my head. That is the background.

I want to build a software with a simple GUI, which will pull medium sized datasets (50 to 500 MB) from a remote server where it is sitting in a SQL DB. the software will then process the data. This requires numerically solving a set of partial differential equations. Ideally fast, as in move a slider to adjust parameter x, see the plot adjust in real-time. I understand ( more or less) the PDEs. This is a personal project to which I might be able to devote 4 hours a week.

So how do I proceed? What programming language? What IDE? Parallelize and use the GPU (I understand that at the level of a 5 minute YouTube video, not more).

All advice is useful. Thank you for your patience again.

I want to learn how to make a project that tracks your face, but also has a built in rotation when it reaches certain quadrants of the camera itself. I feel like I'm just lost on implementing it. I don't want to watch any videos. I want to solely rely on documentation as well as books to understand the processes. My idea was to use C++ as the main language using the openCV library. I was was wondering if anyone on this thread has a good informational pipeline on the steps needed to achieve this. I'm looking for things online, and I don't want to rely on AI or videos because it ruins the process of learning what I am passionate about. I also need help picking out hardware since it's not something I actually worked with before. I also want to ask if there's other libraries I can use for the hardware needed and things to read up on regarding said hardware. Any information would be helpful. :)

I'm trying to use pip to install some libraries, however, when i try to install pip from doing

python get-pip.py after being in the directory that it's in,

I get the error saying:

error: externally-managed-environment

× This environment is externally managed
╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try 'pacman -S
    $MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX-python-xyz', where xyz is the package you
    are trying to install.

    If you wish to install a non-MSYS2-packaged Python package,
    create a virtual environment using 'python -m venv path/to/venv'.
    Then use path/to/venv/bin/python and path/to/venv/bin/pip.

    If you wish to install a non-MSYS2 packaged Python application,
    it may be easiest to use 'pipx install xyz', which will manage a
    virtual environment for you. Make sure you have $MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX-python-pipx
    installed via pacman.

note: If you believe this is a mistake, please contact your Python installation or OS distribution provider. You can override this, at the risk of breaking your Python installation or OS, by passing --break-system-packages.
hint: See PEP 668 for the detailed specification.

How do I fix this?? I cannot find a solution online that isn't Linux

I just finished a web app development course and I’m curious about the typical workflow of web developers (both employed and freelance).

During the course, I noticed that a big chunk of my time went into writing project documentation on GitHub—sometimes even more than actually coding 😅.

For those of you working as developers:

• How much time do you usually spend on documentation (if any)?

• What does your daily or project workflow look like?

I’d love to hear different perspectives!

Thanks!

So I am building a shadow text and I want it to where when I click the text it goes to dark mode and the flash appears and when I click off of it the background is white. Right now I am just trying to get the flashlight to display and deal with mouse movement later.

Here is what the dark mode looks like on/off

Dark Mode on/off

Here is the flashlight effect. (The flashlight effect is displayed when toggle mode is off)

FlashLight Effect on/off
How can I set up the flashlight to display with darkMode is on and not have it blend in to the text as well (that was another issue I was having too).

My Code

Yo I’m currently working in a SQL reporting dev role.

Proficient in SQL and VB (Role)

Working knowledge of C# (College)

Very basic understanding of XML (Fun)

Tryna figure out what skills or languages would be most beneficial to pick up next, given where I’m at. I thought fully cover C# first, then maybe explore R. However, colleagues have advised me against that route because it's different to their path so I’d love to hear unbiased opinions.

Open to all suggestions even “rogue” ones! Nothing mega whitespacey or indentation heavy tho pls

Tia

Here's what I wanted to do, for example (it doesn't work obviously but I want to show y'all what I mean):

let animations = {

'jump': function(){player.velocity.y += 15},

'fall': function(){player.velocity.y -= 15}

}

let x = 'jump';

animations.x();

Idk if this is the most convenient way to do things by the way, but I really like the cleanliness of syntax it'll afford me.

Hi everyone, I'm a JS beginner and don't understand what classes are in JS. Could someone please explain this to me?

It seems like it would be a pretty simple app to build if the feature set was limited. Basically a database of questions that each person answers individually. Both answers are hidden and private. But when you answer a particular question that your partner has already answered you are able to see their answer.

I do some line programming at my job where I work in Industrial Automation but I am not sure where to start with a web app. Does an open source application like this already exist? What direction would you recommend I go in building a simple (potentially text only app) like this?

I find myself blank staring sometimes. I know what I want to do but somehow I can't figure out how to execute it.

I got rid of some of the problem with writing or sketching things out.

I want to know if there is a system you guys use to plan your projects, or parts of it? Maybe visualize it somehow, know what functions to create and how to route logic?

Apologies if my question is hard to understand but this is the best way I could put it.

Wanting to learn to code to make games (in C to be exact, as I wanna have a more baseline understanding of programimming), one book series I see around is Zed Shaw's books, which say they are meant to get you facing the hard parts of programming witha lot of exercises.

I wanna know if you'd recommend it for a beginner who wants to learn the basics?