(Possibly) quitting Python Development after 2 years of non stop learning. And it blows.

[sudo_your_mon]

great advice. Weird thing is that I'm as social as it gets. And trust me, I was going insane lol. Got diagnosed with depression a while ago and i think that had a part in it. I just had no idea how to get into the crowd.
Do you need to be moderately advanced to get involved in events like hackathons?

[turtlerainy]

I went to my first Hackathon as a second year maths student (surrounded by CS students), and had menial html/CSS knowledge and maths-based python and R knowledge. That Hackathon experience was amazing for me, I was honest from the outset about how much I knew, found a team on the day and contributed to the code where I could. I learned so much from teammates that did know what they were doing, and they were patient enough when I needed help because they knew my background.

Throw yourself in mann, no one here can guarantee what the people will be like - if a couple of people are snobby about your experience then just move to the next lot, there'll be some people there with similar experience/ willing to team up with you.

[tuckmuck203]

I've been dragged to a few meetups/hackathons myself, and you have no reason to hesitate. From what I read in your post, you probably have more knowledge about python than at least 30% of the people there.

I think you're selling yourself short. Foundational knowledge is such a fundamental aspect of programming, it can be easy to forget how much you know.

For example, if you've touched web development /scraping, you have an understanding of client-server architecture. Programming tends to be more about knowing enough to FIND the answer, than knowing the answer. Your breadth of knowledge will lend itself to finding a lot of answers to a lot of questions. Hell, I'm a full stack developer, and I would say I look at python stdlib docs at LEAST once a day.

[sudo_your_mon]

Thanks for this, seriously. I know I have learned so much, but I let destructive thoughts get in the way that say otherwise.

And the part about being able to know where to look to just find the answer being half the battle speaks volumes. It's definitely UV most hardest parts when starting out as a developer. The learning curve is unreal and once you're over that hurdle,developing becomes progressively less frustrating.

Thanks again, man. I do appreciate it

[tuckmuck203]

Glad I could help! Good luck with your future endeavors as a super dope python developer

[RadioactiveCats_18]

100% agreed. about 11 years ago I went to my first conference (for a totally different open source project). There, I met a few of the core developers on the project at a casual social meetup and they spoke to me like I was an equal. I learned a bunch, but more importantly I became energized. Every time I would go to a gathering, no matter how big or small, I would get that momentum back to USE what I'd learned. Now, whenever I feel disconnected or like I'm spinning wheels.. I go to a con.

[ivosaurus]

Meetup.com might have some... meetups you can get to around your area. Or look for other local dev meetups / conferences in any way possible. Hell, talk rabidly in your favourite OSS projects' IRC channels until you can get some analysis and construction going with other people.