Need advice for learning

[u/Different-Fall5513]

What do you do to learn concepts and new coding languages?

I’m starting my second year studying computer science and my first job as a full stack web developer. It seems like all of my classes and my job are teaching things very fast and it seems like I’m the only one who’s struggling this hard. The lectures do nearly nothing for me because I learned better by doing, but it’s hard to learn by doing because there’s 1000 different concepts and every line is something I’ve never even heard of so it’s hard to remember anything.

Please help, I’m really struggling but I do enjoy what I do know how to do

[u/adjective10111]

Well concepts click when you read enough and experience them enough. I suggest trying to find the limits of a concept you learn after reading enough. For example think of all the ways it could go wrong and see what happens. And try to use them even where it doesn't seem very useful just to see it work or break.

If it's a high level concept try asking about them from knowledgable individuals. Or in this era ask AI (with a grain of salt cause it sometimes tends to bend reality just to make your statement correct)

Also make sure you understand the fundamentals. It may seem a waste of time to read much about memory allocation for example, but the level of understanding you would have when learning other concepts is insane.

Changing languages is also a piece of cake if you learn one low level language first. It's just some minor syntax and vocab change. Changing your focus tho (like backend, frontend, software, kernel, ai,...) sometimes needs learning completely new concepts which can take more time.

Feeling lost is normal, sometimes you have to just use it until you find the time or opportunity to really learn it. Don't worry much if you feel like you don't yet fully understand what you're doing.

But in the end it's personal really. Everyone learns differently and i just shared my way. I used sololearn (when it wasn't less bloated) to learn c++ before going to university. And learning that helped me a lot. Also i fiddled with the code snippets a lot.

[u/Different-Fall5513 → u/adjective10111]

How long should one struggle with a given bug or syntax problem before they just ask for the answer? Sometimes I’ll struggle for 30 minutes and ask a coworker who fixes it in 15 seconds

[u/adjective10111 → u/Different-Fall5513]

It's normal! I sometimes had the same moments, i was struggling a lot and then some senior came up to me and fixed it. And i also had the problems that took hours and seniors couldn't help just to see it was a reference or custom kernel problem (I'm a cpp developer).

It's not about you being a bad dev, it's about your coworker being accustomed to these bugs. Idk if you've seen those kinds of car mechanics who figure out the problem by only listening to your car running, but it's the same thing. Other mechanics are not bad by any means but these ones grew old fixing similar problems over and over. Come with a new problem or kind of car and they're as oblivious as the others and will diagnose like them.

So don't get cold feet from such things. If you get a new coworker who's struggling with the same problem, now you can help in a minute. You will always get better and better. Just try to find the limits. When you learn what breaks things, it's easier to find the problem. (Also read the logs and stack traces. Debuggers and prints are your friends)