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

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I agree, though I'd like to add that it really helps to learn it properly. I've also met people who learned everything by themselves in an unstructured way, and sometimes they struggle with the underlying concepts. And yes, it's art. But sometimes you want your customer data not to be stolen, and your software not to have any bugs and leaks. I think sometimes it't that kind of art that requires effort, dedication and deep knowledge about a topic.
It's really fun though, at least in my opinion. And it's a broad field. Some software needs mathematical precision and be provable and secure, other things are more design, there's so many different things...

Yeah and I agree, you can just try lots if things on a computer, and if it's not right, you just correct it. Mistakes are cheap while learning... And that's not the case in other professions. So you can just try and figure out things pretty much as you like.