this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
73 points (97.4% liked)

Programming

17486 readers
96 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev



founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I begun learning programming a few years ago, and it feels like I barely progressed. I know the basics and a bit of advanced python(I have learnt to use a few libraries), html and css plus a tiny bit of c++, but not much outside of those. I enjoy programming and solving problems using code, and it’s an enjoyable hobby of mine. But I feel like all I do is extremely basic and I want to advance but it feels overwhelming seeing the countless of things I could learn.

I wanna know what are ways I can actually apply the things I have learnt/will learn on somewhat worthwhile things, because the main problem right now is that I don’t really have anything to do with the things I’ve learnt other than silly projects that don’t really last more than a day and aren’t that complex. I also want to advance my knowledge as previously stated since I feel like I know too little for the amount of time I’ve been learning to program.

For context I’m still in school but not too far off from higher ed, and I have a decent amount of free time on most days(~2-4 hrs).

Thanks if you reply

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 0x01@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Leetcode is a great way to polish your skills. When I was your age, I read programming books and made projects I cared about, it's turned out very well.

I've helped a few others learn programming, practice and working on any project at all always help more than anything.

[–] fool@programming.dev 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My friends Leetcoded and Codeforced quite a lot. Advent of Code is up there too, with the interesting caveat that Advent of Code also teaches you refactoring (due to the two-part nature of every problem).

However, when I was younger I had contempt for the whiteboard-problem-esque appearances of these, but everyone is different.

If you look hard enough there is always a project at medium difficulty -- not way too hard, like a huge project you feel won't give you returns -- not way too easy, like some cowsay clone. Ever tried making a blog? You can host for free on most Git pages implementations (codeberg, github, gitlab...).

As for programming books, consider trying security books like Art of Exploitation -- in the same strain, CTFs can use a decent amount of code, and they're fun in terms of raw problem-solving. I started with the Bandit wargame, which does Linux problem solving from any machine that has SSH.

I'm not by any means a l33t hax3r but I found them pretty fun in my learning journey.

[–] Hammerheart@programming.dev 4 points 1 month ago

Codewars is a cool leetcode-esque thing with less of the corporate dystopia sheen.