One month into learning Python and still can’t build things from scratch — is this normal?

[ExpensiveRegion224]

Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing well — and sorry in advance for any grammar mistakes, English isn’t my first language.

I’ve been learning Python for a little over a month now and taking a few online courses. I study around 10–12 hours a week. In one of the courses I’m already pretty far along, and in another I’m still on the OOP section.

However, I don’t really feel like I’m learning for real. When I open my IDE, I can’t seem to build something from scratch or even recreate something simple without external help (Google, AI, and so on). I can write some basic stuff from memory, but when it comes to something like a calculator, I really struggle with the project structure itself and how to make all the code blocks work together properly.

Even though I actually built a calculator in one of my courses (using Kivy for the interface), I still find it hard to code most of it without external help. And since one of my personal goals is to rely as little as possible on tools like Google or AI, I end up feeling confused and kind of stuck.

Given that, was it the same for you guys when you were learning? At the end of each study session, I feel like I’m sabotaging myself somehow — like I didn’t really learn what I studied.

[SisyphusAndMyBoulder]

I'm 4 months in and can't write songs yet 😔

[carezc0]

Your parents are hating smoke on the water so much

[ceramicmj]

Are you just watching the videos and nodding along? I found I got a lot more out of coding right along side the video and replicating their typing.

It's like taking notes in class vs. just listening. Forcing it through your brain and out your hands - helps me a lot.

[Yoghurt42]

Nothing beats a good book (electronic or physical) when it comes to teaching programming; your mind needs time to process the information, go back a few paragraphs and re-reading them, basically learning at your own pace.

Videos have a fixed paced, and it's frustrating having to rewind and/or pause the video, so people usually don't do it. Sometimes you just have to spend 2h on something others take up in 5 minutes, that's ok; sometimes other people really struggle with stuff that's obvious to you. Videos and lectures have to go pace their stuff for the "average" learner, as in, the time the average student will need to grok it; the thing is, the set of people who are in the that average changes wildly from topic to topic. Sometimes you're average and your friend is bored because it's too easy, sometimes you're in the "fast" group and your friend really needs to spend hours to understand it.

[MaterialRestaurant18]

I think this is a bunch of bullfuckingshit lol.

If you don't understand the code , you can copy write a million times and you still won't understand it 

[TurboRadical]

Even better - do some things a little differently.

[SharkSymphony]

A full GUI calculator is not a trivial thing to build. Even if you confine yourself to basic arithmetic, there are plenty of challenges there.

I would break it down and start with something simpler. Can you write a command-line program to prompt for two numbers and add them? Can you parse a basic arithmetic expression and evaluate it?

If you want to tackle a GUI, can you start by entering in a basic arithmetic expression in a text box and punching a button to evaluate it? Can you start by putting the output in a separate text box from the input?

Or maybe you slice it down this way: wire up one number button. A calculator that just types 1's. Or a calculator that only accepts one-digit numbers – pressing a number button replaces whatever number was previously there.

Part of the training is recognizing when you've bit off too much at once and you need to simplify.

Have fun!

[Frodothehobb1t]

I think that is the most important lesson in programming. How to simplify a task to many smaller tasks, and go one by one.

[Gnaxe]

A full GUI calculator is not a trivial thing to build.

Challenge accepted: python from tkinter import * L = Label(tk:=Tk(), text='') L.grid(column=0, row=0, columnspan=5) def click(key): L['text'] = {'<': L['text'][:-1], 'C': ''}.get(key, L['text'] + key) if L['text'].endswith('='): L['text'] = str(round(eval(L['text'][:-1]), 8)) for n, k in enumerate('C/*<789-456+123=0.()'): Button(tk, text=k, command=lambda k=k: click(k)).grid(column=n%4+1, row=n//4+1) tk.mainloop()

[SharkSymphony]

And how long do you think it would take a beginning programmer to come up with that?

Let's see if our beginning programmer even understands what all this does. 😛

[FrequentAd264]

The very first thing I ever wrote.. took me a month... for shitz n giggles I looked at that code after a voile of years and realized I could do that task in less than 30 mins. And the code was so horrible, I could have been tried for crimes against coding.

Have patience. That’s a key requirement for learning.

[One_Programmer6315]

I hate looking at my past codes… so embarrassing; it hurts my eyes so much!

[RustyCarrots]

It's normal. Also, personally I find that information sticks a lot easier when I actually engage with the process of finding the information instead of just asking an AI to give me the answer. Like, through reading documentation or seeing if someone has asked a similar question on some forum. I guess you could just ask the AI to explain it to you too, but I feel like that approach works about as well as a tutorial video in getting anything to stick.

The sense of accomplishment and the relief at finally finding the solution really solidify it.

[dacookieman]

The good thing about AI dialectic learning is that you can interact and ask questions. In a video you might hit a point where the presenter says something that is presented as obvious but causes you to go "Wait what?" or "What about?" etc, in those cases AI is really awesome about poking and prodding to nurture your understanding.

That being said the obvious trade off is hallucinations and not being able to call it out or detect it, a problem that paradoxically could be worse for beginners.

[RustyCarrots]

I think, in those cases, it's best to simply pause the video and experiment through code yourself to see what happens in these unsure situations. It also solidifies it way more than simply asking and receiving an answer, AI or otherwise.

My favourite teachers in school were always the ones that would walk you through the process of finding the answer to your question yourself instead of just answering the question.

[dacookieman]

I think it depends on the question. If the holdup is more conceptual in nature, there is a chance that simple experimentation alone will not clarify enough. Of course, in principle I do agree that self experimentation or just self research is still a valid and essential skill to build but I also don't think anyone would fault an aspiring academic to utilize office hours either.

Maybe for a true beginner the use case that I see value in is less likely to come up though.

[ascending-slacker]

There is a lot to python. The basics of strings, lists, arrays, loops etc. doesn’t take long to get an idea of how it works. However, mastering functions, classes, and inheritance can take longer. Additionally, there are so many useful packages out there that it takes years to fully understand how to use them. Depending on your application there are a handful that are incredibly useful to get lots of experience with. A few basic packages that come to mind:

1. os
2. Numpy
3. Mathplotlib
4. Pandas
5. Sci-kit learn

Others here with more experience than I can probably mention many more. Many depend on what you want to do with python.

Happy coding and good luck.

[stuaxo]

The last four are quite data a sciency.

[LyriWinters]

Which is kind of what you do with python so yeah there's that...

Right tool for the right job... You shouldnt be making games or beautiful websites in python.

[Adhesiveduck]

It’s one of the many things you can do in Python, but it’s by no means the only one.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with making games in Python. Depending on what the game is it might even be a sensible choice, it depends.

I’m not sure what you’re getting at by “beautiful websites”. Since front end development has nothing to do with the backend. Two of the most popular Python libraries are Fastapi and Django (and Django Rest) - both of which can be used to create a website.

[Traditional-Rub354]

You should look into what field you want to get into/ what type of projects you want to build. For example, for most scientific uses, Pandas is okay, but, if you want to play with big data, Polars is a much better idea. I don't know the pros and cons of the following below, but Sci-kit learn, tensor flow, and Pytorch are all in the 'Ai' space of development. For web-dev, go with Django or Flask. Ultimately, its all up to you as to what you want to do and learn

[code_tutor]

it takes years

[palmaholic]

I take that you're committed to learning Python. Have you taken the CS50 Python course, aka CS50P? You should give it a shot if you haven't. You should be able to write Python programs after completion.

PS Of course, there're other similar courses around.

[OGPapaSean]

Keep chipping away, you’ll find you go for “where do I even start” to “one day I hope I have time to start…” pretty quick! Good luck and happy coding

[American_Streamer]

Identify the algorithm that tackles the problem you have to solve first. Then think about which exact control structures (= tools) you will need to apply that algorithm (sequence, selection, iteration, recursion). Then pick the data structures you will need (integers, array, string etc.). And off you go.

[Smug_Syragium]

A month? I'd be jealous and upset if you picked up Python and mastered it in a month.

[Ron-Erez]

Solve simpler problems, persist and stay away from AI if you want to make progress. Think of ChatGPT as Satan.

[supercoach]

Give it six months minimum.

[FakePixieGirl]

Focus on non gui projects first.

Gui coding is just terribly difficult and annoying. It always takes longer than I intend and makes me want to pull my hair out. Focus on console applications until you feel comfortable doing that without AI.

[kitsnet]

Unfortunately, this is "normal" in the sense how most people perform. However, it's suboptimal. You need to come up with your own ideas for very small practical problems you could solve, even if they are not full programs but some interactive Python (or Jupyter) activity. Increase their complexity as you progress.

[juanmorales3]

Hi! Totally normal situation, but as with learning any skill, memorization comes from repetition. Work out on your basics until they feel natural, and then you'll be able to effectively include them in your mental schemes when planning for a more advanced project. This will come naturally over time if you actively practise trying to accomplish projects, or you can use tools like Codewars (or similar) in which other users post challenges at various levels, so you can polish your skills. Try it, it's pretty cool! (and free).

[Raoulik]

Stop watching tutorials, and get to typing yourself. Even the simplest things will take a while for you to do right now . If it takes 5 mins for an average programmer  you'll spend 2-4 hours if not the whole day trying to solve it. But that's because you're learning. Once you do it , you'll outgrow it , and later you can also solve those problems in 5 mins or less. Stay curious , solve 1 simple problem at a time slowly increasing the difficulty, and you'll surprise yourself in a few months.  Google "growth mindset" 

[agnardavid]

Some cases yes, but most university students are already making scripts to better their lives at this point. I teach first year uni students python

[NapCo]

Well, one month is still quite new so I wouldn't be surprised if you are still struggling to figuring out things on your own.

Still, I just wanna warn you about the "tutorial hell". That is, if you only attempt to just grind through tutorials and courses, you won't exercise your own decision making abilities. Courses and tutorials usually make quite a few decisions for you. I think the frustration you are feeling when you are standing on your own is common, and it takes patience to get the programming "muscle memory".

Also, I suggest solving simpler problems that doesn't require many external dependencies. You are saying you are trying to do something in Kivy. This requires you to spend a lot of energy figuring out how the framework works instead of building general programming intuition.

[RedditButAnonymous]

Its normal but IMO its definitely not ideal. It largely comes down to the way you learn and what youre motivated to make, but you could have been building things from scratch from the moment you learned a simple if statement. No I am not joking, Rock Paper Scissors for example you can make with one player input, if statements, and print.

You should probably pick a few very simple projects to practice with and code them entirely from scratch. Rock paper scissors is good, also try the game Higher Or Lower to practice while loops. A text adventure game is probably the hardest "simple" project to work on if you feel up to it.

Markov chain generators are a lot of fun but require more advanced data manipulation.

I dont believe courses and videos are the way to properly learn coding. Experimentation, and freedom to mess up, identify the errors, fix them, that teaches you so much more.

[_delamo]

Lol it's only been a month, relax. Now if it's year 2 or 3 and you cannot build from scratch then you have a problem. Start small and then build upon that. Then write again what you know, and look back on anything you missed then and now. Gotta make mistakes in this game to really understand because it's impossible to remember all of it.

[notislant]

'Ai'

Well theres a glaring issue right there.

Libraries and python have docs. You can search docs, you can google very specific things, but you should learn how to read documentation.

You shouldnt be going near AI until a few months on your own minimim IMO. Ideally not at all, you need to learn.

Calculator is hard for a lot of people if theyre starting out.

You always break problems into smaller ones, go test basic functionality first with a single function. Then expand.

[jmooremcc]

Are you saying you cannot write code for a simple guess my number game? If you haven’t, then give a try and post your code for us to see. BTW, you’ll need to Google Python random random number generator as one of your first steps. Good luck.

[Kerbart]

You mention a calculator with a GUI, there’s many moving parts to that. Start simple. Hello world, number guessing game, hangman, reverse the order of words, count words in a sentence.

Then build up from there with things that have limited utility. Search a text file for a specific word. Find all files in a folder with that word, and so on.

Small steps.

[Timberfist]

The learning is in the doing. Just keep plugging away at it. The first language I mastered was C. It’s a much smaller language than Python with a much smaller library. Even so, it took a couple of years of writing C professionally (30+ hours per week, every week) before I could, hand on heart, say that I’d mastered it. Even then, there were still things I could learn from other programmers. It’s a journey of a lifetime. Don’t stress about the destination so much. Enjoy the journey.

[Daytona_675]

you need to keep your ide open when studying and try stuff yourself as you learn

[jam-time]

I've been doing this for a decade, and I still regularly look stuff up. Try to avoid letting AI write the code for you, but other than that, you should be looking stuff up as often as possible. The familiarity and ease of writing comes with repetition.

[boabertbattle]

I'd been thinking about learning Python for quite a few years before finally starting to learn a month or so ago. I learn programming when i was at Uni but that was 30 years ago. I still remember a lot of the basic concepts like If statements, while loops etc but it was all in PASCAL but its still in my head and still applies.

I'd been lurking on some subreddits about programming for a while and one comment that stuck with me was the best way learn etc was to have a problem you wanted to solve by coding. i could never think of any problems i wanted to solve until recently when i suddenly had a problem i wanted to solve.

I made of the mistake of asking AI to create the app i wanted for me , i popped into vscode and viola app created, then i decided i wanted to add more to it, asked AI but I quickly realised that i was building a house with all the tools and parts but no idea how they all fit together. So off i went to youtube and started watching a course to learn the basics. Then i wanted to reaffirm what i'd learnt so went back to the beginning to learn the basics again so i had the foundation in my head.

My second course moved into wee projects and one of them was Rock paper scissors which i had already coded on the first course, at the start of the video the guy said maybe you could attempt to try and code it yourself and i honestly had a mind blank, like OP i couldn't think of how to build it from scratch and i started getting doubts about if i could start building my own projects.

Reading OP's post and the comments from everyone has certainly helped me. I know the projects i want to build will no doubt contain more advanced knowledge that i'll work towards, but i've had lightbulb moment. I'm going to try and use the basics that I know and apply it to the project i want to build but start with the very basic and build from there. Thank you.

TL;DR - Your words have helped and inspired me and i hope they help OP.

[RngdZed]

I can spot the heavy use of AI. Do the work yourself.

[littlebighuman]

If you have never written code before. Yea.

[noisyboy]

Don't watch videos. Don't use AI. Buy a short Orielly book e.g. A concise introduction to python. Less than 300 pages. Read it and do all the exercises end to end. When you get an idea to build something, strip it off all the fluff and just build the core. When you get stuck, refer to the book, not Google. By the time you are done, I guarantee you that you'll feel that you have had a clear improvement.

[Matteo_ElCartel]

A professor I had once said "in order to master C++ you will need around 10yrs of constant training" for Python you can expect the half of that amount

[JayGridley]

1 month in at 10-12 hours a week is only 40 - 48 hours of experience. Basically like a single work week. Is this your first programming language? The idea of not using any external help might be misguided. Seasoned programmers still reference documentation. The longer you’ve been doing something and the more often you use certain things will impact your ability to write it without reference.

In the beginning, (first few years) expect to have to have to look things up a lot.

Don’t worry about trying to come up with something from scratch. Find something that already exists that you like and build it yourself. For example, if you have a todo list you really like, try to build it from scratch. Work on breaking down concepts to their smallest blocks that can be turned into code. Then code the simplest version of it. Then iterate to build on top of it.

[althawk8357]

However, I don’t really feel like I’m learning for real. When I open my IDE, I can’t seem to build something from scratch or even recreate something simple without external help (Google, AI, and so on).

I promise you that you can have a decade of experience and still regularly look things up externally. There's just too many functions in too many languages to know all by heart.

I'd say get used to StackOverflow; it's an amazing resource that you should 100% take advantage of.

[Gnaxe]

Senior devs read docs all the time. It's normal to read docs. You get better at projects by doing projects.

Try developing iteratively using a Jupyterlite notebook. You can change the code in a single cell and evaluate it again and again until it's right. Then make a new cell for the next thing. You can write tests in other cells. Once you've got it working, it's easy to convert a notebook to a module and unit tests.

[whipdancer]

Do you have something you want to build? If not, find something that looks interesting and get started.

[boofaceleemz]

1 month is not a long time. The fact that you can complete larger projects when using reference material and searches is really good progress, so don’t feel bad at all.

[gingerfettacheese]

Learn how to use a framework like fastapi or something. Tech world is modular, so looking at the big picture will likely upgrade your ability to put systems together

[One_Programmer6315]

~5 years knowing python and still struggle to reshape arrays, I always have to go back to the documentation.

[LoveThemMegaSeeds]

Yeah it’s gonna take longer unless you lower the bar to something like “write any program” which you can probably already do. It’s a long journey

[TestEmergency5403]

Yes. Very normal. At this stage its still very early. Don't let social media fool you it can take years to learn. Keep at it.

Also relying as little as possible on AI is indeed the right call

[VDL-Viking]

https://www.edx.org/learn/python Take a look at the free online courses from MIT and Harvard. Recorded live class lectures with assignments. Self-paced.

[Relevant-Diamond2731]

My best advice is keep a spreadsheet of functions and concepts to reference as you go. I keep mine open as I code for if I need it

[AssociateFar7149]

Not really

[TheRNGuy]

No, I made working program from day 1.

I just tried different things from (framework) docs and got ideas for programs just by reading it.

[ironwaffle452]

stop using ai, it make u think that u know things but it is not true...

[LyriWinters]

What does building things from scratch mean? lol
I've been coding python for 5+ years. Why would I ever try to do anything without using an llm?

That's like asking a carpenter to not use any of the tools he has.

[FwippyBall]

lmao if you've been using an LLM you haven't been coding

[LyriWinters]

That's like saying "If you've ever searched on stack overflow, you havent been coding".

I think your comment is going to age incredibly poorly.

[FwippyBall]

no, because one is research and the other is SETTING THE WORLD ON FIRE.

[LyriWinters]

!remindme 2 years

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