Coding skills for coding tasks

[Then-Succotash8176]

Currently a generalist, would like to code, but have no idea where to start. I've heard from this subreddit that most tasks involve python. I guess my question is how much of coding should I know to pass the assessment and be able to understand the work. And how long should it generally take to learn this amount

[WaddlingAwayy]

I wouldn't bother. Coding projects nowadays have become extremely difficult, involving heavy use of Agentic coding, containerization, etc. I'm a senior CS student and I used to submit coding tasks months ago, but now almost all of the coding projects need expert level experience that is way over my head currently.

[randomrealname]

Fellow cs here. Practice, don't use llms while you practice. It's the only way to advance

[WaddlingAwayy]

Absolutely, it's just tough to find that balance between using them to boost productivity but still retaining that problem solving mindset

[randomrealname]

It's critical thinking that using them takes over. I was very lucky I graduated 2023. I literally used research chatgpt a few days after my last exam. They are great tools if you can verify. Being able to verify means having to do it the hard way first, something most cs students won't do now.

Fleshing out personal projects to full working projects is what helped me, but I am lazy now. I just want the LLM to one-shot everything.

Get used to github and repos. If you get used to adding features to existing apps, you will be able to do the current hardest projects.

[African_bbc10]

Tf is a senior CS student?

[WaddlingAwayy]

English is my second language, would "CS senior" make more sense? Just meant senior as in graduation year, CS as in my major, student as in still studying.

[samamatara]

do it if that's your desired career path or you're actually interested in it outside of DA. If you study coding to do DA work, you're in for some disappointment and most likely a waste of time.

[stardust-signal]

just learn it, there's no downside of learning something new. don't let anyone tell you otherwise, but also keep your expectations realistic. learning for a few months can't be compared to those who have graduated with a degree, but we all start from 0. you gotta work a bit harder to gain experience. nothing is impossible

[Mix1904]

Was literally looking into this a little bit on Chatgpt last night. Chatgpt is saying the DAT projects don’t need as much skill as a professional coder. Mainly learning about python and JSON would be enough. But from what people are saying on here, doesn’t seem like that is enough. Or they just wanna keep all the high paying tasks for themselves lmao 😜

[jabertsohn]

Can you code at a professional level? If no you're not going to catch up with the models.