I would like to code for a living and to contribute to open source projects and things, but my coding skills are absolute shit after taking online courses and watching video tutorials. How can I learn to code for real?
What I would like to learn is algorithms, web development (“full stack”), how layouts work (both in like kotlin compose and HTML) and how to read other peoples code. Maybe thats more than I can chew, but its probably good for me to try out many things before getting settled on one.
Now I have been coding for a while already (~ 4 years), but I kind of feel like I need more guidance to be able to actually create code that works as intended intentionally, and not through trial and error / stack overflow. As for what level i am at, CS50 is probably my only qualification, I have played around with APIs (I.E. making discord bots), and made some html “apps” (horribly made, but things like the “genius” game and a calculator) and “prototype” react websites (as in, really bare bones, barely working).
I do plan on taking CS or something similar, but i’m not yet in college, and I would like to have a good head start before getting there.
Sorry for my bad English, and any help is appreciated.
I would also add that one of the best experiences one can have is to have to maintain one’s own code - coming back 6 months or a year later (long enough to have forgotten the details of it) to the code one has made to add new features is quite the eye opener and a serious incentive for improving the quality of one’s coding because now you’re being burned from all the stupid lazy choices if your past self and also spotting things you did not know were important and whose full impact you were not aware of.
I’ve crossed paths with people who for one reason or another only ever did brand new programs from the ground up and their code tends to be messy, hard to understand and prone to break in unexpected ways and places when people try to add or change features in it.
Yup, exactly. And rereading your own code also gives good appreciation for how code should be commented, because even if I understand the code itself, the “why” is often lost to time.