c/coding-for-beginners

A senior dev told me my comments were useless.

I used to comment every single line like 'increment i by 1' until a guy on my team said comments should explain WHY not what. Has anyone else had to unlearn bad commenting habits from tutorials?

Stuck between learning Python or JavaScript first for my first project

I spent about 2 weeks going back and forth on which language to start with for a simple weather app. Everyone said Python is easier for beginners but JavaScript is more practical. I ended up going with Python because a friend told me "just get comfortable with logic first, worry about browsers later." Three months in and I can build basic scripts that grab weather data from an API. Has anyone else struggled with picking a starting language and regretted their choice later?

Hit 10,000 lines of Python in three months. Did not plan that.

Chat with a 14 year old made me rethink how I teach coding

I was helping my nephew with his school project last Tuesday, just basic HTML stuff. He asked me why I kept saying 'div tags are containers' without explaining what they actually do. Honestly, it hit me that I was using all this jargon without thinking about how it sounds to someone new. He said 'just tell me what it looks like on the screen, not what it's called'. Ngl, I realized I've been overcomplicating things for beginners by focusing on terms instead of visuals. Has anyone else caught themselves doing that when explaining code to someone just starting out?

TIL that most coding bootcamps push you to learn frameworks way too fast

I overheard a guy at a meetup last night saying that beginners should just jump into React after a week of JavaScript. That sounds crazy to me. I tried that route 3 months ago and ended up spending 20 hours debugging something that was basically a vanilla JS problem I didn't understand. I think we're in too much of a rush to build flashy stuff when the basics like loops and callbacks are still shaky. I've been going back to practice raw JavaScript for 2 hours a day for the last 2 weeks, and my code is way cleaner. Has anyone else slowed down and seen better results?

My first big project just crashed my computer and I lost everything

I was working on a simple to-do list app in Python last night, about 3 hours into it, and I guess I had too many browser tabs open. My computer just froze up and I had to force shut it down. I hadn't saved my code at all because I was in the zone. Now I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to recover unsaved files from VS Code or if I just have to start over from scratch. Has anyone else had this happen and found a good auto save setting or something?

I finally argued with a senior dev about when to learn frameworks vs fundamentals

I had a debate with my coworker at lunch last Friday. He said beginners should jump straight into React because that's what jobs want, but I think you need to understand vanilla JavaScript first or you're just guessing. He showed me his portfolio site built entirely with three frameworks and it looked great, but when I asked him to explain how the DOM works under the hood he kind of froze up. It hit different because I realized there's no right answer, it depends on what kind of coder you want to be. Do you think starting with frameworks sets people up for faster jobs or does it make them weaker in the long run?

That coding bootcamp workshop at WeWork last month nearly wrecked my project

I went to a free Saturday session for beginners in Denver and the instructor told us to skip version control for 'speed'. I spent 3 days trying to undo changes I made to my HTML file with no backup. Has anyone else gotten bad advice from these pop-up coding events?

Monday tried to learn React and ended up breaking the browser on my own machine like 4 times

I was following this tutorial for a simple todo app and somehow my terminal turned into a nightmare of red errors - had to uninstall and reinstall node three times before my roommate asked if I was okay. Anybody else have days where you just can't get the environment to cooperate?

Overheard a senior dev say 'just read the error message' and it stuck with me way more than any tutorial ever did

I spent 3 hours debugging a syntax error last night because I skimmed the output instead of actually reading what it said, and now I wonder how many other beginners do the same thing.

Warning: spent 3 days on a CSS issue that was just one missing curly brace

I was building a simple landing page for my portfolio and nothing would line up right no matter what I tried. After staring at the code for hours, I found I forgot a closing curly brace on line 47 of my stylesheet. Has anyone else wasted a whole week on a tiny syntax mistake like this?

Wrote my first loop that actually worked at a coffee shop in Portland

Was reading through the Python docs and found out you can use an else block on a for loop...

I've been working through this online course for about 2 weeks now, just basic stuff. I was looking up how to handle loops and stumbled on this in the official Python tutorial. You can put an 'else' after a 'for' or 'while' loop and it only runs if the loop didn't hit a 'break'. I had no idea that was even a thing. Has anyone else used this in a real project or is it one of those obscure features nobody actually needs?

My first real coding project crashed so hard last night I almost quit

I spent the whole weekend building this little Python script to organize my recipe collection, you know, sort them by ingredient and cook time. I was so proud when it finally ran without errors on Sunday night. Then last night I tried to add a CSV file with like 200 recipes and the whole thing just froze up and dumped a memory error. Turns out I was loading every single recipe into a list instead of processing them one at a time, which is apparently a rookie mistake. My boyfriend just laughed and said 'welcome to programming' which honestly made me more mad than the bug itself. Has anyone else hit that wall where a tiny oversight makes your whole project useless? I need to hear I'm not alone on this.

Finally figured out why my CSS grid kept breaking after 3 weeks

Turns out I was putting commas between grid-template-areas values instead of spaces lol, a random Stack Overflow comment from 2019 tipped me off. Has anyone else spent way too long debugging a single character like that?

Shoutout to the guy at the local library meetup who told me to stop copying code line by line

Hit 1000 lines of Python code last night and had to sit down

I've been learning Python on and off for about 6 months and I finally crossed 1000 lines across my little projects. It's not a big number compared to real developers but it felt like a real milestone for me... like all those YouTube tutorials and error messages finally add up to something. I was coding a little weather scraper that pulls data from a free API in Dallas and just realized I'd passed that mark. Has anyone else hit a random number like that and felt weirdly proud of it?

I finally tried that 'start with Python' advice my cousin gave me

My cousin, who's a software dev, told me to just pick Python and build something small, like a tip calculator, instead of reading about coding for weeks. I spent a whole Saturday in my apartment following a free online tutorial and actually got it to work. It felt way better than just watching videos about theory. Has anyone else had a good first project that made things click?

I spent $200 on a coding bootcamp video series that was just a mess...

The instructor kept jumping around, the projects were broken, and I lost two months trying to make sense of it. Honestly, I learned more from the free tutorials on the official Python website in a single weekend. Has anyone else had a bad experience with a paid course and found something better for free?

Can we talk about the time I spent a whole month trying to make a simple number guessing game in Python and it just wouldn't work

Last week, I finally found the missing colon after my 'if' statement that I'd been staring at since March, and my friend just laughed and said 'syntax errors, man'.

My entire Python script crashed because I forgot a single colon yesterday afternoon.

I spent 3 hours debugging a loop that was supposed to print numbers 1 through 10, only to realize the syntax error was right on the first line after the 'for' statement, so what's the dumbest little mistake that's ever wasted your time?

Spent 4 hours on a missing semicolon in my first JavaScript project

I was building a simple to-do list app and the whole thing just wouldn't run. The error message was useless. Turns out I missed a semicolon on line 47, and my browser's console didn't even point to the right line. Has anyone else had a tiny syntax error ruin their entire afternoon?

I tried to learn from two different free Python courses and one was a total game changer

Started with this video series that just threw code at you, no real explanation. Spent three days stuck on a simple loop problem. Then I switched to a course that built a small project from scratch, like a number guessing game. The second one showed you each step, why it worked, and let you break it. That project-based thing made it click in a way the first one never did. Why do so many free resources skip the 'why' part? Anyone else find a specific course or site that finally made a concept stick for them?

Just found out how many lines of code are in a simple web page

I was poking around in the developer tools on my browser yesterday, looking at the code for a basic news site. I right clicked and hit 'View Page Source', expecting maybe a hundred lines. It was over 1,200 lines of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for just the homepage. That blew my mind, because it looks so simple on the screen. Has anyone else had a moment like this that made you realize how much is going on behind the scenes?

Saw a cool interactive map at the Portland library that got me thinking about simple projects

I was at the Central Library downtown yesterday and they had this digital map showing real-time book checkouts by neighborhood. It was just colored dots popping up on a simple city outline. The librarian told me it runs on a basic Python script that pulls data from their system every hour. It made me realize how a beginner could build something similar with free tools and a weekend. Has anyone made a simple data visualization like this as a first project?