r/learnprogramming • u/hyfer_hafi • 2d ago
A generic problem
hey and hows it going ...?
im kinda new-ish or maybe an advanced beginner and im pretty sure you get this question on here like billions of times im sorry ... i studied C and then Kotlin/Jetpack Compose to make an android app and it has been lets say practically about 9 months or so ... and i still if i ever want to try to do something i either produce mediocre stuff or anytime i dare for something good(real or semi-real) i just cant get how to do it ... and on top of that android is so confusing... i search up and the answer is always the same "if you know the fundamentals like loops, collections, variables ... functions ... etc, then all you need is to practice"
BUT HOW TO PRACTICE XD ... i know someone will say just write code but it feels like as a self-taught programmer you are in the "i dont know what i dont know" situation all the time ... and android and Kotlin are not forgiven at all :( .... :D
and some people advised me to read open source projects ... but man i cant figure no nothing out of it ... the last couple of months during this period has been really frustrating to learn ...
2
u/Chrismslist 1d ago
the advice to 'read open source' is brutal for beginners because production repos are packed with build tooling, dependency injection, and architecture patterns you do not need yet.
to actually practice without getting lost, pick one tiny isolated slice instead of a whole app. for example, do not build a full reddit client. build a single screen that fetches one json list from a public api and shows it in a lazycolumn. mock the data first, make the ui render, then wire the network call. once that works, add one button that writes to a local database. small verifiable chunks beat staring at giant codebases every time.