How to become a competent coder? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by ChilledPeppers@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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I would like to code for a living and to contribute to open source projects and things, but my coding skills are absolute shit after taking online courses and watching video tutorials. How can I learn to code for real?

What I would like to learn is algorithms, web development ("full stack"), how layouts work (both in like kotlin compose and HTML) and how to read other peoples code. Maybe thats more than I can chew, but its probably good for me to try out many things before getting settled on one.

Now I have been coding for a while already (~ 4 years), but I kind of feel like I need more guidance to be able to actually create code that works as intended intentionally, and not through trial and error / stack overflow. As for what level i am at, CS50 is probably my only qualification, I have played around with APIs (I.E. making discord bots), and made some html "apps" (horribly made, but things like the "genius" game and a calculator) and "prototype" react websites (as in, really bare bones, barely working).

I do plan on taking CS or something similar, but i'm not yet in college, and I would like to have a good head start before getting there.

Sorry for my bad English, and any help is appreciated.

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[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world -1 points 3 months ago

The obvious answer is to jump in and actually code something you want to use yourself. It will be fun, right?

I must admit that this kind of question always baffles me a bit. Why would anyone want to do boring courses and video tutorials when they can just get started on a real problem and learn as they go? There's nothing more dull than solving a fake problem.

Unless - unless! - it's that really you're interested in the status and money that comes with coding rather than the coding itself. In which case go ahead and get lots of paper qualifications and jump thru hoops to polish up that CV etc etc. But be prepared for a boring career.

this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025

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