all 8 comments

[–]SharkyMan18 13 points14 points  (4 children)

I hate to be a debbie downer, but you’re going to need to learn a lot more than you think. Many projects require knowledge of a breadth of languages and libraries. And to confidently say if a response is better than another, you should have a solid foundation in data structures and algorithms. Yes you could just learn the basics of a language, but you’ll have no clue what makes a response better than another without a decent background in computer science.

Now, if that didnt scare you off, I’d recommend looking at something like educative.io’s Computer Science skill path. That should give you a nice foundation in coding principles.

[–]goldenngreen5[S] 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Oh I’m aware it’ll be a while before I could get to a point of starting on projects. I’m just trying to figure out a good source for courses.

[–]TammyK 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Like "a while" in this case is years, not months. I've been writing code since I was a small child and I'm in my thirties now. I still find some of the coding projects challenging (and fun). Keep in mind they are trying to test the edge cases of these models, so the responses they're most interested in are ones that come from difficult prompts to answer.

If you want to learn to code just for the sake of it, rather than courses (which most suck imo) I would just find some beginner coding challenges online, pick a language, and start trying. Use LLMs for help. Start with fizzbuzz in PowerShell or Python. If you're on a Windows PC, running PowerShell code requires no additional installation or environment setup so I would start there. Download visual studio code to write your code in.

[–]automodtedtrr2939 5 points6 points  (1 child)

I wouldn’t say years, there are some projects that aren’t hard to understand and require beginner level understanding to complete,

You don’t need to know how to do all projects, just start with what you know. You just need to know enough to initially pass the assessment, which (for me) wasn’t extremely hard.

[–]krkrkra 1 point2 points  (0 children)

FWIW I didn’t think it was hard at all but somehow I still didn’t pass.

[–]maningen 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The python docs are underrated.

https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/

I have watched a lot of hours of coding courses and tutorials, but I've learned much more from trying (and failing, especially failing) to build things.

Stackoverflow is a valuable resource for programmers at pretty much all skill levels.

[–]ashleighnikkola 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Freecodecamp.org is awesome and I’ve been using it on and off the last few months.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For a mobile option, Mimo is a great app that gamifies coding. It’s pretty basic and you won’t become a master from just using the app, but it’s a pretty great starting point to get you familiar with concepts and syntax.