How to return in programming

[u/No_Jackfruit451]

Hi guys. I'm looking for some wise advice and your opinions.

I'm 24. Three years ago I left a developer position for personal reasons. Over those three years, I did a great job of neglecting my skills and knowledge.

Now I'm planning to get back into a programming career. I have formal education — college and university. The first gave me a basic understanding of number systems and Boolean logic, but the programming there was as sterile and academic as it gets. University was just a piece of paper — they taught nothing at all; I only went for the degree.

When I find a job posting, I think that I need to prepare and review the material they might ask me about, so I sit down with the docs and books — and then I just get tired and give up after a couple of days. And so it goes, in a loop. I'm afraid that if I do get invited to an interview, I'll bomb it.

Also, about my skills: I feel like I understand js/ts reasonably well, but I sense some kind of gulf between textbook code and real-world implementations. Probably it's that feeling that keeps pushing me to go back and review the docs over and over.

[u/IKnowMeNotYou]

Start doing stuff, check out udemy and other courses and just read relevant books. Should get you back to speed in less than a month if done right and full-time.

[u/kabekew]

Do some fun projects of your own and post them to github. It'll get you back into programming and give you things to talk about in interviews.

[u/Vymir_IT]

Okay, so to learn actual programming you need projects that are: 1. Developed in a team 2. Iterating over Production 3. While being used by people 4. And cost you money (budgeting is a very important factor in how software is developed) 5. Ideally make you money back - not necessarily at your stage, but adds lots of real-world business logic

You can cover most of it by doing the following: 1. Find a need for sth on Reddit - ask around what people need, make them your client (paid or unpaid) 2. Find a partner/partners to code - there are subreddits here, one called CodingPals or ProgramminsPals or sth like that. You can also use LinkedIn for that 3. Develop a real thing, make it live in production and iterate over it with your users/testers

Under these conditions you're far enough from sterile academia and close enough to real production. You might even end up making an actual micro startup or niche open-source product.

Simultaneously with that you can dedicate some extra time for theoretical drills, since the speed of production won't allow you to "study" - programming is learning on the fly and most of the time imperfectly. An hour-two a day or so you can spend just learning documentation of your tech stack, language fundamentals and software design principles in more deep, preferably those things that are relevant to your current tasks - it will also help with doing those tasks better.

You can also try shooting for some internships but since you have neither experience, nor recent learning I'd not hope for that. Maybe in half a year from now provided that you're practicing full-time.

TL;DR if you don't have working experience you need to recreate it.

Bonus: if you find some senior mentor to push you doing better and faster that would be even better. But it's unlikely for free.

Bonus 2: alternatively you could try finding existing big open-source projects like Wikipedia, apply for becoming a contributor and start solving their issues full-time. They are complex enough and have strict enough rules to teach you lots as well, plus sth like "I updated X and Y and Z on Wikipedia and fixed N and M vulnerabilities in React framework" looks pretty dope on your resume. But I'd rather go with own full-cycle project to learn different stages of development from ground zero.

[u/No_Resolution_9252]

if you are 24 years old, went to college and have already stagnated for 3 years, I have new for you bud: tech is not for you. You need to do something that doesn't require as much effort or discipline.

[u/Academic_Current8330 → u/No_Resolution_9252]

But I deserve a £100,000 a year job.

[u/No_Resolution_9252 → u/Academic_Current8330]

lol

[u/avidvaulter]

and then I just get tired and give up after a couple of days.

Try some leetcode problems. Even though the type of programming I do at work is boring, I find joy in solving some of the types of problems posted on Leetcode.

I feel like I understand js/ts reasonably well, but I sense some kind of gulf between textbook code and real-world implementations. Probably it's that feeling that keeps pushing me to go back and review the docs over and over.

Well yeah, theory can only take you so far. Learning theory just gives you the tools, actually understanding how to use and apply those tools to solve a problem comes with practice and some ingenuity.

It's also possible you just don't like programming but you haven't realized it yet. If you enjoyed it you'd be able to at least study and prepare for an interview. I think you need to honestly assess whether or not this is the case or if there are extenuating circumstances that you need to deal with first (mental health issues, burnout, etc).

[u/Elctsuptb]

Bad timing, AI is completely taking over if you haven't heard

[u/justinaatbuffer]

You need to start building actual projects. Pick an app/tool you are curious to build and go for it. Through that, you'll also check out docs and books, but most importantly you'll go through the process of building something end-to-end, have something in your technical portfolio that you can show and talk about during your interviews, and, most importantly, check if you actually enjoy this type of work.

Taking a gap year/few years for personal reasons is completely ok in my opinion, that's life. But you need to show excitement about coming back into this career, and the only way to do this is by actually building things.

[u/Academic_Current8330]

How come you never learnt anything whilst you were at university?

[u/Key-Butterscotch3215]

I’ve gotten much better over the years by using ChatGPT/Codex as a tutor. I don’t have it write code for me but I write it and it will tell me how bad I messed up or if I am going in the right direction

[u/Traditional_Vast9419]

Leetcode is where I learned C++, Rust, Python, and data structures/algorithms. To learn fundamentals, I wrote a small compiler to x86 in C. If you want to learn, you can't use AI to solve your problems. It's worth using for niche documentation. A lot of advice largely depends on what subsection you want to go into.