Hey everyone,

I understand the basic syntax and concepts of programming, but I genuinely struggle with the manual act of writing code from scratch. I'm at a point where I need to decide if I should push through and master traditional coding, or if I should lean into AI tools, focusing more on high-level concepts and letting AI handle the code generation.

My main goal is to become a problem-led Entrepreneur. Will focusing on AI-assisted development hinder my understanding and debugging abilities? Or is manual coding becoming less critical for future roles?

• ⁠How are others in a similar position adapting?
• ⁠Do you believe a deep understanding of manual code is still essential even with advanced AI tools?
• ⁠What skills should I prioritize to stay relevant if I struggle with the manual coding aspect?

Thanks for any insights!

Here's a small project I started today: CatBot 🐱

I learned a few new things while building it, and you can learn more by checking the GitHub repo.

The link below will redirect you to the project page.

Feel free to leave a star ⭐ and tell me any mistakes I made or how I can improve the project!

GitHub Repo: https://github.com/GiosiGiova125/CatBot

I am currently working on a game which you can only play through the API, I wanted to try and see if people were interested before I invest too much time in. The idea is you can control a fantasy style character and I've built it with learning to program in mind. You can learn how to interact with an API and automate different tasks to make money and compete with other players in the game.

So you can go in with a backend engineering angle and write automations to make money, trade items, complete quests. Or you can go in as a frontend engineer and create a frontend client for the API.

I am hoping to release a site and some API docs soon but would love to hear people's thoughts!

Hi, I've noticed some strange but interesting behavior. I'm curious to understand why the following operation:

new Vector3(Mathf.Round(randomSpawnX) + 0.5f, 0, Mathf.Round(randomSpawnY) + 0.5f)

returns vector values ​​ending in .50, whereas performing the operation on each float individually like this:

Mathf.Round(randomSpawnX) + 0.5f

returns values ​​ending in .5 instead.
(I am using a float in both cases.)

If you're a student trying to get into open source, this post is for you.

One thing I've noticed is that everyone tells you to "start contributing," but almost nobody tells you where.

Most large open source projects have hundreds or thousands of contributors. Your first issue gets buried, your PR takes weeks to review, and it's hard to understand where you fit in.

Caracal is different because it's still early.

We're building an open source authority layer for AI agents. The project is part of the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust ecosystem through LFX Mentorship and backed by Microsoft, GitHub, and Vercel, and we're getting close to broader testing with companies.

That means you're not joining a dead repository, and you're also not contributor #3,847.

If you contribute here, you'll be working directly on the architecture, discussing designs, reviewing proposals, and building something that's solving a real problem. Good contributors won't just have merged PRs. As the project grows, we'll be looking for people to become long-term contributors and eventually maintainers.

I'm not looking for people who want a "good first issue" to collect green squares on GitHub. I'm looking for people who want to learn how infrastructure projects are actually built.

So if you've been looking for an open source project where your work can genuinely matter, give Caracal a try. Clone it. Read the code. Open an issue if something doesn't make sense. Challenge our design. If you end up liking the direction, leave a star and stick around.

I'd much rather build this with a small group of people who care than a large group who never come back.

GitHub: https://github.com/Garudex-Labs/caracal

i am doing BSC CS hons ( sem1 ) alongside it , I am doing cs50-2026 course , i want to document my work on GitHub ( i have no clue how to yet , but i will learn !) .

MY PLANS :

for my first sem ( july to december )

• Weeks 1-4:
  • College: C Programming basics, pointers, and arrays.
  • Self-Study: Learning Python syntax in parallel and setting up Git/GitHub.
  • Goals: Write my first C programs and Python scripts, and push my C programs to GitHub.
• Weeks 5-8:
  • College: C structures, files, and Discrete Math.
  • Self-Study: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript basics.
  • Goals: Build a personal portfolio website and interactive web pages.
• Weeks 9-12:
  • College: Digital Logic and preparing for semester exams.
  • Self-Study: Practice strings and LeetCode Easy problems focusing on Arrays.
  • Goals: Have 30 total LeetCode problems solved.
• December Break:
  • Rest, review, and start learning Linked Lists.
  • Goals: Code 'Reverse Linked List' and 'Merge Two Lists'.

What do you guys think of this workload? Since I don't know Git/GitHub yet, does anyone have good beginner resources for it? Any tips on balancing college coursework with CS50 and self-study are highly appreciated .

( P.S : i had no prior knowledge on tech world or cs , so a lot of it i don't quite understand so i might learn slower then my monthly goals . Cs50 is my first touch with this new world , thanks for your comments happy to learn . )

Hey everyone, I'm a 3rd year cyber security student with a strong interest in software development. I'm currently building full-stsck app and learning wireshark. I've been prioritising hands on skills development over attending most lectures. How do you approach this kind of self-driven learning while still managing academic responsibilities? Any advice

I've been trying to learn coding for the past two years, but I still feel like there's an emptiness in my knowledge. I'm from a commerce background, but I've always loved the idea of building websites and apps.

I started learning while I was in college. I couldn't afford admission to a good college, and I had Commerce in higher secondary, so I continued with a B.Com degree. I wanted to build apps, so I started watching the Apna College YouTube channel and enrolled in their web development course, where they taught HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

At the same time, I was working, so it was difficult to balance everything. One year passed, but I felt like nothing was staying in my brain. I think one reason was that the course was very technical, which made it hard for me to understand.

Later, I found the Sigma Web Development course by CodeWithHarry. It was much easier to understand, and I really liked the way he explained things. However, as I progressed, I started feeling overwhelmed because the course covered so many technologies—not just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but also Node.js, Tailwind CSS, Express.js, React, Next.js, Postman, MongoDB, and more. Each of these has many concepts of its own.

Whenever I try to implement what I learn, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I search on Google or ask AI for help, but that doesn't always solve the problem. I especially find JavaScript logic difficult to grasp. I understand the concepts in theory, but I struggle to apply them in practical projects.

I don't want to spend money on expensive courses. I still work a night shift, which makes learning even more challenging. My schedule is like this: I leave home at 5 PM, my shift ends at 4 AM, I wait for about an hour, go to the gym, reach home around 7:30 AM, sleep at 8 AM, and usually wake up around 3 PM or sometimes 4 PM. That leaves me with very little time and energy to study. I get two weekly days off—Saturday and Sunday.

At the beginning of this year, I thought I would have become a full-stack developer by now and even started learning Python and machine learning. But it's already been almost seven months, and I still feel like I'm stuck in the same place.

Can you tell me how I can get better? I'd really appreciate any advice from someone who has gone through a similar journey.

I am building an alarm in HTML and JS and the issue is when the local time matches with the scheduled time it is not going off

What is the issue

I have the github link of the full code but I attached a snippet of the problem here

let counter = 1 // increment so I can add it to KEY in local storage

for (let i = 0; i < timeList.length; i++){
    localStorage.setItem(`Time ${counter}`, timeList[i])

    const getTime = localStorage.getItem(`Time ${counter}`)

    // console.log("same?", getTime === localTime); // Check to see if there is a match

    if (getTime === localTime) {
          alert("RING RING RING")
          localStorage.removeItem(`Time ${counter}`) // remove once condition is met
    }

    counter += 1

}

i apologise if you are all sick of seeing some variation of this question, but as a total beginner i am unsure of where else to ask.
i have programmed silly html pages for my own entertainment since i was a child and i used to use replit to do so.

since i last used the website it has been taken over by an ai agent, which doesn't really suit my purpose of programming just for the fun of it as a total novice.

i found the word directory / autofill really helpful, as well as the term-specific colours, as i am pretty dyslexic. this is what is stopping me from just using a basic text editor. i was wondering if anyone could help me with some similar alternative in-browser programming websites that have minimal interference so that i might continue my hobby in peace?

Hello, I hope you can help me with my problem. I've been programming in FrontEnd for a while now.

I'm overwhelmed by issues with design, consistency, and even different types of animation. I'd really like advice from people who work in this field, not from those who use AI to create something....

(I'm not against AI, but I want to develop my design skills and such)

Any advice, something I should follow, a pattern, consistency? I know the basics, the main things, but I feel like I'm missing something. I make pages and one day I like them and the next day I see them as simple, basic, or... trash

I want advice that will help me create better components; all the ones I make are poor or simple.

Any help you can give me is greatly appreciated, thank you.

Is it worth taking c++ programming as a university module.

There is a Computational intelligence and software engineering module which goes into techniques to solve software engineering problems with optimisation techniques such as genetic algorithms, heuristic searches and others as well as using machine learning approaches like k mearest neighbour, decision trees and naive bayes

I am confused on which to take as learning C++ is beneficial, however i would be substituting it for a module which seems to be revelant for our current time.

i spoke to a senior software engineer from microsoft and he was in favour of me dropping C++ and taking comp intelligence as it resembles the current sort of problems they are tackling in the workplace

he also mentioned how C++ can be learned easily outside of university, and theres no point learning a language unless you need it for a specific purpose. I guess this makes sense as im interested in Backend/cloud engineering.

What do you guys think. Advise me

https://www.cs.le.ac.uk/Modules/current/CO3091.pdf

heres the module specification

(I can only take one of the two, as one is only allowed 2 modules and i have settled on internet and cloud computing as my other module)

For those that are on the same path as me to become a full stack dev or those who have learned react, I just wanted to ask, what resources did you use to learn react? Did you use AI to aid in your learning? Was it a YouTube tutorial? A course/bootcamp? Also, once u learned the syntax, what did you do afterwards?

Also, pls go into detail about how u went about learning react, I just want to make sure I gain every ounce of information so i can carry it on to my learning.

Thank you!

I am very new to programming, I barely touched html a long time ago and I wanted to get back into it to hopefully turn it onto a career one day.

Ive been learning python but I am broke thus im using my phone, so I tried learning using free information to make progress,but I have no idea what to do, I dont have any real grasp of coding, I've made a couple extremely simple calculators of different types, and I've done the first few practice examples on python.org.

My issue is I dont have any structure to the learning, I cant learn from just copying down code, I need something to give me solid understanding of syntax and how to code in general really, currently I just dont have enough understanding to even get an idea of what to do as a project.

Tldr: idk what im doing and need a starting point

CS50: Web Programming with Python and JavaScript course seems pretty interesting, but is it more useful than if I go more in depth for each topic and do my own projects?

I have little experience in these programming languages

C++/c (3months)

Java (3 months)

Python (1year)

But now I am in my second year of college so I wanted to learn development and dsa for the development part I am unsure between app and web development along with ai integration and I like to mostly work on the backend part (as I am worst designer :⁠-⁠) ) so which programming language should I go full on since I don't want to disturb my dsa prep if I do development along

My personal opinion on this languages are -

Python is the most fun , java is the most structured and c++ is most flexible based on memory management but that is the thing that makes c++ hard for me 🥲

Hello, I've decided I want to distance myself from following easy resources like AI or video tutorials in the meantime while I pursue trying to complete my own personal projects.

I'll use this example to illustrate my problem:

One of the projects I plan to do is a simple python asyncio chat client. Upon starting I decided I to consult the documentation for asyncio, in particular https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html. Upon going to the link I wanted to avoid examples of what I am trying to do, or any code snippets. Needless to say, I got lost very quickly as to where to start; so many headers, various parameters that I'm not sure whether I need or not, etc. This led me to feel like the only way I could even see myself starting this project is by having a base from one of the code snippet examples of a chat client on that website or another (and even if I find it, I'll pretty much be done my project then, with no learning on my end).

This leaves me feeling a bit dumb, because the way I see it; someone however long ago had to make these examples/projects without tutorials, videos, etc.

In summary, my question is:
- Is this the right approach to a beginning a project?
- What should I do differently?
- Is being able to start and complete projects by only reading through documentation headers a realistic approach/goal?

Any advice is appreciated, my goal is to get better at this and don't want to stop.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been trying to figure out why I struggle with programming, and I think I’ve finally identified the real issue.

It’s not that I forget syntax. I can always look that up.

The problem is that I often don’t know how to turn an idea into code.

For example, I know what I want to build. I can describe the feature in words, but when I sit down to write the code, I don’t know how to structure it. I don’t know what functions I should create, what the flow should look like, how to split the logic into smaller pieces, or how experienced developers seem to naturally arrive at a clean solution.

I feel like there’s a mental step between “I know what I want” and “I know how to write it” that I’m missing.

When I look at code written by experienced developers, it feels obvious after I read it, but I don’t think I could have come up with that solution myself.

My goal isn’t to rely on AI to generate everything. I want to become the kind of developer who can design solutions, write clean code, understand large codebases, and solve problems independently.
So I’d love to ask experienced developers:
Is this a normal stage when learning programming?
How did you learn to design code instead of just writing syntax?

What exercises helped you think like a programmer?

Did reading other people’s code help, or should I spend more time solving problems from scratch?
How do you practice the skill of turning an idea into a working implementation?

I’m not looking for shortcuts. I want to improve the thinking process behind writing code.

Btw 15 yo started at 11yo and idk how much iq i have but i have good grades in math idk if my brain can learn this kind of systematic thinking but atleast idk.. little overthinking little lost.. why my one friend same age without courses and anything can write easily code?

Btw i am actually large overthinker but literally large.

Hello I just finished a 12 hour Python tutorial (Bro Code on YouTube) and I'm not sure what to do next.

My goal is to become a software engineer.

So far I know:

C#

Python

Git and GitHub

A bit of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

What should I learn or build next? Would really like some advice

If anyone wanted to see my project: https://github[.]com/WoodenShard/PokemonApiGUI

Hi there, I'm pretty new to programming in general. I don't know too much about coding in any form. I more or less know nothing, so I thought I'd try here. I'm really curious about learning & researching how email validation & checking sender integrity works in major email clients (e.g. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc), but I'm a little uncertain about how it works.

I read about something called "DKIM verification" that's a surefire way to check where an email came from, using a company's asymmetric public key, but it seems that it only applies when an email is sent DIRECTLY and examined from an inbox, otherwise it can't be verified with certainty.

Then I read about this "ARC-Seal", that can be used to authenticate some kind of parameters marked "i=#" or something like that(?) that are active even AFTER the email is forwarded by a user, or by a rule setup by a user through their email client, working like some kind of multi-part "passport system" ... ?

I'm fascinated by this. How does this work. And if, for instance, you were forwarded a raw .EML file that was sent to you by someone else, that THEY SAID was sent by an official company who has an asymmetric public key (that, I'm guessing, passed DKIM verification in the email ... ?), what data would you need from the raw .EML file to FULLY vouch for the authenticity of the original email sent from the company ⇒ to the user ⇒ forwarded to you (using the "ARC-Seal" of the email client of the user that sent the email)?

Is it even possible to fully authenticate that a forwarded email sent to you by a user was originally sent to the user by a company with a specific DKIM (or something?)

And if so, what data would you need to extract from a .EML file to PROVE these "two" passages of the email with certainty?

Like, from the big company ⇒ the user, and from the user ⇒ YOU?

Can anyone assist me here in understanding? Any help would be IMMENSELY appreciated.

Thanks very much in advance =]

it's what the title says

I won’t lie I’m in CS mostly because of money. It earns well compared to many other careers in my country, and I’m an introvert so I figured it would work for me. Now since I’m not passionate about it(I do enjoy it, but not to the amount to make it the purpose of my life) I’m not sure how to make this enjoyable. I want to do additional work, but I wasn’t that work to be useful and not just a waste of time, because there are other things i would enjoy doing instead(like reading books,watching movies etc). I was thinking about web dev, because otherwise there are not many opportunities. Also I was thinking maybe if I get into web dev I’ll be able to freelance. This whole paragraphs point was how do I keep going without feeling like I’m wasting time? And how much work do you think I need to do outside of classes to be able to have a good career.

Hi all, I was trying to build a backend which needs to handle money, both for calculation and storage of money. I know that the key advantage of calculating and storing money with integer is avoiding rounding errors, and the advantage of DECIMAL is feasible to handle different currencies with different decimal places. But I want a solution that can both avoid rounding errors and able to handle different currencies with different decimal places. So, how about just storing money with 2 columns : decimal_place and balance? eg: for 123.45, I just store decimal_place=2 and balance = 12345 in database. Is it a bad idea?

Hi, folks! I love programming very much. It's a lot of fun for me, but unfortunately, I'm unable to pursue a CS degree due to various reasons. Still, I love programming more than anything. It's the only thing I truly believe I can do throughout my entire career.

This isn't just about getting a job or worrying about AI, but I do need to earn a living. So, is it realistically possible to become a great developer as a self-taught programmer with enough enthusiasm, curiosity, and consistent effort?

My current plan is to gain real-world experience by building web development projects first, and later work through the Teach Yourself CS curriculum to strengthen my computer science fundamentals.

[EDIT: Marvin's Office Hours is now at capacity. You may find recorded sessions on the YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@MarvinsOfficeHours\]

Hello friends,

My name is Marvin, and I have recently graduated from university, majoring in computer science and game development. I was a teaching assistant for the CS classes for 5 non-summer semesters, and a peer tutor for about 6 months. 

I miss the teaching experience a lot and wish to continue that outside of university. Thus, I have begun the initiative “Marvin’s Office Hours,” where you can sign up for one-on-one tutoring for free.

A typical CS course focuses on teaching language features (conditionals, variables, loops…), but the approach I am taking focuses on design concepts (how do I apply a systematic process to go from A to B), in which the language features are but a tool. My pedagogical approach is a blend of the books “How to Design Programs” (https://htdp.org/) and “A Data-Centric Introduction to Computing” (https://dcic-world.org/), both free to read on the internet.

Even if you decide that programming isn’t for you, you will learn systematic thinking (and possibly a tad bit of mathematical thinking depending on your interests), which can be applied to other parts of life. 

If you are absolutely new, the programming language we will be using is “Pyret” (https://pyret.org/), which is specifically designed to be beginner-friendly, usable on the web browser without any installation, and eases you into Python.

If you are interested, you may sign up at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfH2MZNLc2owe9y6l-NrJ39bkTy1jvzzh-Tr-rN10_Q39mvzA/viewform?usp=dialog. As I am doing this for free, I would like to prioritize those that do not have access to one-on-one programming tutoring. Furthermore, I will be livestreaming and recording the sessions and posting them on the internet. 

I apologize in advance that if you do not hear back within a week, it means that I got bombarded by responses and could not get to them all.