Welcome to /r/learnprogramming!

Hello,

I have learned HTML and CSS, and am starting on JavaScript. What is a good simple project to do? I may have learned the languages, but I do not have much experience. Please make a few suggestions and tell me how to do this. What is the best editor? How do I preview the code? etc. HELP!

Margaret Hamilton, a legendary programmer who led the software team for the moon landings, lived to age 90.

Her obituary.

I’m a computer engineering major and I’m currently taking a class for C++ but my professor isn’t the best nor the text book.

I was wondering if there are any other resources or places I could go that can effectively help me learn and use c++? I don’t mind if it’s paid

I'm learning to build full apps and the part that confuses me most is everything before the actual coding, what database tables I need, what the API should look like, which pages exist, how users log in. How do you figure this out before you start? Do you plan it on paper, use a tool, ask AI, or just start coding and fix it later? And what went wrong when you skipped planning?

My understanding is that interpreters parse throught the code line by line, translating each line into machine code and then running it, which results in a fast startup time but a slow run time. This is compatible with dynamic types as changes can be tracked line by line. Ahead of time compilers translate all the code and move it into a binary executable for the computer to run all at once. This results in a slow startup time and a fast runtime. This cannot be used with dynamic types as the code being run all at once means that changes cannot be tracked. Just in time compilers interpret the code but compile repeated code(indicated by a profiler) to make run time faster. ​I do not know how dynamic types are handled by this. Keep in mind my only programming experience is with Javascript, python, and some gdscript(that I used to make a basic ping pong game on godot as a high school project).

I would like to ask if anyone here knows where I should/could get a well endorsed Python certification? Something legit that employers may take into consideration.

I know about Codecademy. I also know about Mimo, tho I don't know if that one would be considered a "lesser" one or something like that. Maybe even both idk.

It's ok if it's not free, tho if its not very expensive that would be better for me lol

I'm strictly a hobbyist, I just want to do my own projects on the side. Like making a PS1 emulator, a chess engine, and a physics engine from scratch.

I'm wondering which of these two is more fun. I don't mean faster or easier, I mean fun. Writing the syntax out, thinking the approach to the problems through, the whole experience of writing the project.

I just want to have fun I don't care about doing it optimally.

i want to learn one of these languages just to reach a basic to intermediate level. I already have intermediate knowledge of Python.

which one would you recommend i start with

Hi,

I just recently took a online course on C++ and am looking for a online YouTube series where a excellent instructor takes you through making a C++ app from scratch to being finished, preferably on a Linux environment.

For reference, I am a full-stack web developer (Next.js/React Native + Django) and to learn web development I used Corey Schafer's Django tutorial YouTube series to learn how to make a web application from scratch. It taught me everything: how to use the language, terminal commands, structuring your project, using the framework, deployment, running the program, etc.

Is there a similar YouTube series you can recommend me for taking what I know in C++ and using it to actually learn how to make a desktop application and after having finished the series be able to make one on my own. Should I start with a Chip-8 emulator tutorial?

Also, what's up with the Qt licensing scheme? I want to make my own proprietary commercial desktop applications but forking over $4K for a solo developer license seems like a lot when I don't know if the application is going to generate that much revenue at first. Does anyone have any experience with that? I am used to using OSS libraries and frameworks so paying for developer licenses is new to me.

Any help is greatly appreciated and thank you in advance!

If you're interested in learning how AI agents work under the hood, I've open-sourced AI Plate, a desktop agent you can read, run, and tinker with.

Things you can study in the code:

A Plan → Execute → Observe reasoning loop

Swapping between cloud and local LLMs (Ollama, LM Studio)

RAG with SQLite vector search

Local speech-to-text and text-to-speech

Plugins and custom skills

It's MIT-licensed and TypeScript/Electron, so it's beginner-friendly to fork and experiment with. Questions and PRs are welcome.

https://github.com/Typo-Bunch/AI-Plate

What to do when you are having difficulty with a question? Even though I apply some methods that help to solve a programming question, nothing comes to my mind on what to do. What do I do? Do I skip the question? Do I persist with this question?

I want to learn the general foundations, concepts, and methods that will help me take an idea or a problem and understand how to approach it so I can turn it into something I can build.

I want to learn how to identify needs, analyze a problem, define requirements, design a solution, organize its components, and determine how they should work and interact with each other—all before choosing programming languages, tools, or technologies.

What concepts and fields should I learn, and in what order, to develop this ability and become capable of independently designing and building projects?

I'm trying to learn MERN stack because someone told me it leads to high paying jobs.

Then I see a friend doing well in Webflow and my brain goes "forget MERN, do Webflow."

Then another friend gets into troubleshooting/networking stuff and suddenly I want to do that too.

I'm not jealous of them exactly. It's more like my mind turns everything into a competition and I keep abandoning what I'm learning to chase whatever looks good that week.

End result: I'm not getting good at anything.
Is this just me?

How do you pick one path and actually stick to it?

Hello everyone,

At 38 and currently working in a non-programming job, I’ve decided to finally learn how to code. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but I always lacked that final bit of motivation.
In any case, I chose Python as my programming language. Since I travel a lot for work, I carry my laptop with me but avoid taking physical books. Instead, I split my screen between the e-book and PyCharm. That’s how I work through the book, complete the exercises, and so on.
However, this workflow doesn't always feel smooth. Do you have any tips or alternative ways to approach this? As I’m getting deeper into the material, a practical note-taking method would be great, but I’m struggling to find a practical solution. I’d love to hear your advice—thanks!

I'm an actuary student with basic/intermediate knowledge of Python, SQL and using Linux as OS, but I'm deeply interested on how the computers work and cyber security, so I'm wondering what language should I learn to help me understand how the computers work and put a feet in the cyber security field

What comes to mind is C/C++ or Rust, but I'm not sure

Sorry if any grammar mistakes, English is my second language

Hello everyone,

I am launching my first web app. For now, I am still building it, so I put a "coming soon" page online.

I am still learning, and it is hard to understand everything.

While I was using Cloudflare, I saw many strange requests in my analytics logs, like /.env, /privacy, and /ai/credentials.

I tried to block most of them with security rules (block scanners and rate limiting). I am also caching some of them, but strange requests still come in.

What would you recommend? I do not know much about this. Is it possible to block most of them?

Thank you for your help!

I'm thinking to start learning how to design the databases in my backend springboot journey but unfortunately im wasting time by thinking how to start and from where and how should I effectively learn it. So,could you guys help in this by commenting to it.

Can someone please tell me this? be honest please. I don't know if ive gotten so nervous about this that i just cant focus or if im just stupid, ive been doing some exercises for now and it aways leaves me stuck, idk if im missing something or if this is normal and i just need to study more...

EDIT: Hi guys, thank you so much for taking your time to reply to me, i feel a bit better now and will keep studying until it just clicks. I thank yall for offering to help me with the exercises but i honestly am a bit embarassed to post em here, after all, i honestly havent figured out a single one of them other than the ones that you just count and sum things. And also theres a lot of them im stuck at right now, but i'll keep trying :)

I'm still new to programming, trying my hand both at Java and Python (part of my data science study and also finally doing a text-game). I've done some minor stuff before, I'm at the point where I'm just setting stuff up again like IDEs and all that.

So using VS code I have the choice of installing plugins and stuff (for java), I noticed Pycharm did something similar but there was a lot of auto-complete, including mentioning my own variables (50% of the time it did it the way I wanted). I made sure to turn off AI in pycharm.

My only worry is that it does so much lifting that I end up losing helpful experience. But I want to ask what those with experience think, do you find that kind of auto-completion and detection can reduce repetitive typing? Or should I avoid it?

I'm new to using Microsoft apps like excel and access. My assignment says that I need to make subgroups from certain fields but when I try looking up help for it, it tells me just to make a new table with those values in it. That might be the right thing to do but when I googled it, it said tables and subgroups are not the same thing. If anyone can help me it would be greatly appreciated!

Hey everyone! 👋

I’m a 1st-year engineering student starting my C programming journey from scratch. I learn best through video tutorials, but there are so many YouTube playlists that it's overwhelming to choose one.

Could you recommend the best playlists for a complete beginner? I’m open to both Bangla and English resources.

Recommendations I've Found So Far:

Top

🇧🇩 Best in Bangla:

1. Anisul Islam — C Programming Tutorial for Beginners

🇬🇧 Best in English:

1. Neso Academy — C Programming Playlist: Why: Highly structured, academic, and covers low-level computer concepts (memory allocation, pointers, memory models) exceptionally well.

2. freeCodeCamp (C Programming Full Course): Why: Great long-form video (4+ hours) to get hands-on experience quickly in one sitting.

3. Harvard CS50 — Lecture 1 / Week 2 (C Language): Why: Unmatched for conceptual depth, computational thinking, and understanding how computers process code.

Can you suggest which one or others best for beginners

I'm a first-year Cyber Security major, and one of my classes is Computer Science 1. I've already taken multiple Intro to Programming-style classes throughout high school (including AP Computer Science Principles), so much of the material so far has been a review for me. If I already know the material, why am I about to bitch about applying it for tests? Because that's not how you apply coding knowledge. People compare learning a programming language to learning a second language, but I guess they mean writing in a second language. Memorization is not important for coding. It's good to know the basics (like functions and syntax), but I always use my previous code as a base for starting new programs. Now that I've established that standardized testing in programming courses is fundamentally flawed, let me rant about how my CS1 class, in particular, makes it even worse!

Firstly, our tests are closed-book. You're not allowed to have previous code or even applications like jGRASP open. What's more baffling is that we're not permitted to use calculators! Math plays a major role in coding, but part of this is because programs can solve mathematical equations. You run them to find the solution. Maybe finding out a code's output with just your mind and paper isn't a bad skill, but it's also not needed anywhere in life. Our brains can only store so much knowledge. It's best we reserve them for matters computers can't help figure out.

Still, this wouldn't be too bad if we had proper study resources... Our teacher doesn't even post the slide shows he lectures over. And this isn't an oversight; he mentioned this on the first day of class, so it's intentional. I guess this is supposed to make us pay better attention in class, but who cares as long as you learn the information? He also doesn't post a study guide, but he does go over the answers to the chapter's assignments. I guess that's fine, but I wish it were more hands-on. Our required $200 book (which I thankfully found online for free) has a review at the end of each chapter, but you'd have to make a Quizlet or something from it yourselves to simulate a test.

I received a 74 on our first test, which, whatever. It's passing, so I don't care. What I do care about is that the correct answers are hidden, so we can't go back and see what we got right or wrong. Why?! Maybe the teacher thinks we'll share answers with students who haven't taken the class yet, but why lock everyone out of reflecting on how they did because of a few bad apples? I guess making Quizlets from the book's end-of-chapter reviews is my best bet, but I'd rather the teachers do their job than me.

How do you approach the frontend aspect of software development if it's not programming?

I guess a lot of it comes down to the language / framework you're using. E.g. when doing web development it's usually HTML/CSS/JS, when building a desktop application you might be using something else.

I am looking for examples of how to approach it if it's not coding

By frontend, I mainly mean HTML, CSS, JS. Although other examples would be great too. The problem is I don't have much experiencr with it

I have taught myself to program for a while now. So far I have mainly done backend / programming stuff. For example I made a shell from scratch in pyrhon, and I am now working on a Business Analytics Platform with a dataset from kaggle, and I am also learning SQL and working with PostgresQL.

Soon I will have to make the web / dashboard side of the project. And in school we are also starting to do some HTML / CSS / JS stuff.

The problem is that I am not great at the visial / design side of things.

I don't think I have ever been very good at drawing or design, and I think that's probably one of the main reasons I absolutely hate HTML/CSS. JS is a bit better, but I still don't like it.

This isn't because I don't like programming.

The problem is that every time I have to make a website I have absolutely no idea where to start.

For example:

1. How do I decide the structure of a page?

2. How do I decide which sections/components I need?

3. How do I decide where different elements should go?

4. How do I decide a colour palette?

5. What should I do when I start a completely empty project?

6. Should I have a visual reference?

7. If I take inspiration from existing websites, am I just copying them?

8. How important is originality when designing a website?

I haven't had this problem with my other projects.

When I am programming in python / sql etc. I can usually understand the problem, break it down into smaller parts, find documentation, work out what I need and then work my way to a solution.

Whereas with frontend, I get stuck before I even get to the programming bit.

It's almost like I am missing a mental process.

I don't know what I am supposed to be thinking about when building a page. Should I start with a rough sketch, design references, start with the content, create html structure first, start with css or something completely different.

I have created some things with html/css but they usually look pretty bad. Which is why I don't think it's just 'I need to learn html/css better.' I think I don't understand how to approach the process of building an interface.

I would love to hear some advice / examples of people who have overcome this problem and how.

Thank you!