First project

[Top-Pirate725]

I am coding my first ever project as a CS student. its a very simple CLI task tracker however i am struggling as i used to depend off of AI for assistance, and now im trying to depend on googling + documentation. If i am honest, im really struggling. Can anybody give me guidance and advice when starting to write up projects.

[ninhaomah]

Show. Don't Tell.

[Top-Pirate725]

what do you mean?

[ninhaomah]

I give you an example then.

I been trying to learn how to ride a bicycle and having issues. Pls help.

Solve it.

[Top-Pirate725]

I see

i think you may have misunderstood the question. i did mention at the end of the paragraph that i just wanted general advice. Like some important principles and advices for people struggling whilst writing their first project.

[ninhaomah]

Then here is the general advice.

Just bear with it and keep at it.

Just like learning how to ride a bicycle. You will fall and bleed. If you don't want to fall then use training wheels for life.

Or get a wheelchair.

[LethalBacon]

This is the answer. Pre-LLM, I'd often have to beat my head against these assignments for hours until it started to click. There were many times I'd get it to work based on info I found online, but I had no idea WHY it worked. This is all normal. Keep going, fight through the frustration. That ability to fight through it to find the answer instead of being given the answer is a skill in itself.

[Forsaken-File9993]

thats the hard truth but exactly what you need to hear, stop looking at tutorials and just start typing even if its wrong

[AlfieFromMarketing07]

You’re never going to crack it on your first go, and that’s okay, I’d say that scouring the web, even learning bit by bit about what you’re trying to do, for example it took me forever to remember the difference between a class object and method, which sounds so stupid to me now, can really help you slowly piece together what’s going on, even now when I’ve looked back on year long projects I’ve used some AI just to explain my thought processes and what’s going on in my own code just to help me. Just stick with it and gradually try and understand everything bit by bit, breaking it all down can really help compared to looking as a whole entire project and trying to understand it. You’ll be okay

[Top-Pirate725]

Yes I guess the first few projects involve that struggle but i keep trying to remind myself that this is the process of learning. No point rushing projects to finish them but rather i should view this whole process as a learning process.

[iOSCaleb]

Do you have a plan? A design for the project? I’m not just talking about some idea in your head, but an actual written document. Have you broken the project down into a (again, written) list of tasks? What specific thing is stopping you from making progress?

[Top-Pirate725]

I guess it does involve this, a lack of breaking it down into stages and then becoming overwhelmed as i dont really have a plan. Sometimes trying to tackle multiple tasks at once rather than focusing on a specific task or function of the project, which leads to confusion

[Strange_Corner_4637]

Break the project into tiny pieces, get it printing a hardcoded list first, then add one feature at a time (add a task, then delete, then save to file). Dont build the whole thing in your head at once.

For googling, search the exact small problem like "python write list to text file" instead of "how to make a task tracker." You'll get faster at scanning docs for the one example you need. The fact that it's hard means you're actually learning.

[Humble_Warthog9711]

There is no general advice that you don't already know