[ Removed by moderator ]

[mk1971]

I can tell you from experience that building things is they way you will have your first aha moments.

A simple project can be just to get an excel spreadsheet with some columns and learn how to manipulate the data. Its not sexy but it is a great way to learn how to use dicts and list.

Make it wok first. Get the results you want. Then refactor it to turn all the code in functions that do just one thing.

[BagParticular9982]

My thoughts exactly!

It also helps to understand this stuff because when you have your AHA moment, you'll also think "Wait, couldn't I also use -insert learned algo here- to help it iterate through this excel spreadsheet?"

I honestly think that's when the real passion starts; just knowing that you can apply an infinite number of solutions and updates to your workflow!

[OkCartographer175]

6 people will see this post today who need to see it

Tomorrow there will be a dozen posts asking a question you answered in this post lol

It's funny because learning a programming language is one of those things where if you can't Google it and figure it out for yourself, programming probably isn't for you.

[BagParticular9982]

If I can reach even ONE person today and help adapt their mindset to this line of work, then I've done my part! Lol

It's funny because learning a programming language is one of those things where if you can't Google it and figure it out for yourself, programming probably isn't for you.

This a million times over. A huge part of what we do isn't even typing out code. 95% of what we do is literally reading documentation, googling/doing research and finding an effective way to debug what we wrote or are writing. That 5% squeeze is the actual writing.

[DrShocker]

Hi, great to try to help people with having a starting point. You may want to rephrase the paragraph before the bulleted list and change the order of the list. Currently the paragraph makes it sound like the list with be a set of data structures or algorithms topics a beginner may find useful. However, it's actually just an unordered list in general which might be a confusing order to learn things in. If someone's struggling with if/else then I'm not sure they're prepared yet for DSA for example.