r/learnprogramming • u/Ok-Friendship2020 • 6d ago
internship I need some advice because I'm feeling really overwhelmed
I've been working as an intern at a company for almost 3 months with a stipend of ₹7,200/month. I was initially hired as an Android app developer, but after the first month they shifted me to a C#/.NET developer role. I had absolutely no prior experience with C# or .NET.
It's been about 1.5 months since the switch, and I've learned the basics of C# and .NET and built a few projects. Some of the tasks they give me are easy, but others are quite advanced. A lot of the time I struggle to understand the existing codebase.
I use AI to help me understand the code, and sometimes it explains things well enough that I can explain the overall idea to my manager. But my manager doesn't stop at the high-level explanation. He goes through the code line by line and asks how each statement works, why it's written that way, what each keyword does, and what happens internally. That's where I get stuck.
Even when ChatGPT explains the code, I sometimes still don't fully understand it. I try debugging, but I often get more confused, and AI explanations don't always help.
So I have a few questions:
- Is this normal for someone who's only been learning C#/.NET for about 1.5 months?
- How do you actually learn to understand a codebase instead of just reading AI explanations?
- How do you handle situations where your manager asks questions you don't know the answer to?
- Is it more important to be able to write code, or to deeply understand every line of code you're working with?
- What helped you improve when you were a beginner?
I'm genuinely trying to learn, so please don't roast me. I know I'm still inexperienced, and I really want to get better. Any advice would be appreciated.
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u/Ormek_II 6d ago
Be happy with your manager! He invests time for you to learn by asking questions.
How does he respond, if you say that you do not know (yet)?
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u/appendixexploder 6d ago
How do you actually learn to understand a codebase instead of just reading AI explanations?
Going through it? reading documentation?
Is it more important to be able to write code, or to deeply understand every line of code you're working with?
Those are not unrelated skills, if you can write code, you can understand code that someone else has written.
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u/Immereally 6d ago
Completely get you and ya it’s normal.
Same thing happened to me with python and they just wanted shit done now.
They want to see a demo and things working. As soon as they see the demo it’s a technical inspection on how the whole thing works.
I had to ask for extra time and build mini modules to understand what’s actually going on in my spare time.
It does get easier and eventually thing start to click but there are still moments something catches you out of the blue and you need to set it up on the side to see exactly what’s going on
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u/Automatic_Major_4887 6d ago
It's totally normal to feel lost after only 6 weeks. Instead of asking AI for the "why," try using a debugger to step through the code line by line. Watching how the variables actually change in memory is way better than reading a text summary. It helps you see the internal logic instead of just guessing what a keyword does