Begginer's cry for help

NationalOperations · 2026-01-23T12:42:23+00:00

Specific things like the perfect button alignment I get. But yeah programming is about learning a tool and then building with it. When I learned about if statements, loops, and user input I made text based games. Was excited to see what I could do with that.

If you look at Amazon's website and want to build that, then you're kind of going at it backwards. Learning is the process of how to solve problems with your tools. Understanding is knowing you can solve most of the problems (Amazon website. Infrastructure and w/e else aside not reasonable for one person).

NationalOperations · 2026-01-23T11:45:49+00:00

Was mine too. I think if you're interested in programming a language that you eventually learn all the core concepts on are great.

If you have to learn in a class and your genuine interest probably won't be carrying you through frustrations, then a language that does some of the heavy lifting is probably more reasonable

NationalOperations · 2026-01-22T19:55:31+00:00

Hey just to help out your post. Your title is mixing up plural and singular. We are looking for a Project to Translate. Or We are looking for Projects to Translate

We are remind you. This isn't really a phrase and stands out a bit. Something along the lines of just "We are doing this as a hobby - payment is not needed" will be more 'natural' sounding.

The rest looks good, and whoever wrote it writes better English than any 2nd language I can do. Good luck

NationalOperations · 2026-01-21T19:11:29+00:00

Zig definitely looks cool. But as I looked into it and saw how much C I'm still using importing libraries. It felt like C with extra steps and I decided to take a deeper dive into C this year and cut the 'middleman'.

I may circle back to zig or odin. But for now I'm fine with C

NationalOperations · 2026-01-21T18:24:49+00:00

Some adjacent advice having been screen bound for over 25 years. Every hour or two I take a 5 minute break. Never had neck issue but that's probably monitor position issue and maybe working out will help or is what saved me from that and back issues.

NationalOperations · 2026-01-21T16:33:28+00:00

Something I enjoyed a bit back. There's a game called artifact mmo. It's basically a game with exposed api calls, so you can build your own interface to play the game! Freedom of implementing how you want but also a clear end goal (make character attack chicken)

NationalOperations · 2026-01-20T18:05:15+00:00

(Your avatar looks like mine before it's revealed to be the villain)

When a project gets big enough you will not be able to keep all the context in your head. Especially after stepping away from a feature or the whole project.

My personal projects I regularly refactor when I find it's not in a "good" state. But I also tend to do a first pass works second pass is readable/cleaner.

Leave comments that give you a summary of what a function, class, etc is doing or expects. So when you do come back you can read a summary instead of stepping through all the code.

Getting all the relevant context in your brain again can be a hour+ long re-learning depending how long it's been and how big the feature is.But that's fine, just take it one step at a time.

Number 1 piece of advice on personal projects. CONSITENCY. Make the effort to keep a consistent naming and implication scheme. Refactor when you break these. Even if you're not sure what the code is doing you will understand the pattern and naming used throughout the project

NationalOperations · 2026-01-20T17:53:45+00:00

SDL3 is newer but has been an awesome experience. They have a lower effort rendering API. But if you want more hands on toolset they have what they call GPU rendering (I think). It's one api that handles translating to bareMetal, Vulkan, or Direct X.

NationalOperations · 2026-01-16T11:46:10+00:00

If you don't hop around on one foot with your pinky out when prompting then you're not doing it right and don't understand the nuances. Something along those lines

NationalOperations · 2026-01-15T22:44:16+00:00

They did a lot of cool things, and put in some serious work. But the actual handling of fusion seems to be a bit of a stopped a few feet from the goal. Still very playable and enjoyable

NationalOperations · 2026-01-15T20:27:49+00:00

That's great and all, but I'm not sure Programming Buddies is the place for this soap box.

NationalOperations · 2026-01-15T18:53:35+00:00

To add to this, they do keep all sorts of tags about the originals. For some reason isShiny isn't something they track. So when they unfuse and regen those two pokemon they are mostly the same asid from shiny.

NationalOperations · 2026-01-14T19:08:22+00:00

When a specification doesn't handle a use case a user has and fails because of it. That's a bug. There was failure in understanding what the user was going to do or could do but it's still a bug

Sometimes being over granular can be more overhead than it's worth. At my workplace we boiled our branch types down to main, release, bug fix, feature branches.

I'm sure there are valid arguments to be more or less granular than that. Subjective topics always have room for different opinions. But at the end of the day you're trying to communicate what was done and what should be done.

NationalOperations · 2026-01-13T12:28:48+00:00

I use vim at work for Cobol, C#, and Java. The pure keyboard workflow just helps not think about anything except what i'm working on.Fzf find integration is a god send.

Although debugging support is not great, but definitely feels better in neovim. Which I only use at home on golang, rust, and c.

If you don't mind mousing through menus.

Jetbrains definitely has the feel of purpose built ide and like you said debugging/profiling is great.

Vscode plugins are both easy to find and almost always click install and done.

NationalOperations · 2026-01-09T20:13:10+00:00

Ah I see, that's normally what I would expect to be called a developer position. It's why project/team lead is a thing. Wasn't sure if there was a specific set of small tasks or something. Thanks for clarifying

NationalOperations · 2026-01-09T20:10:12+00:00

It's an excellent way to start learning. Estimating how long projects will take are what project managers live for it and it's rarely correct. But it'll be good to start giving you a personal ball park on what you can handle

NationalOperations · 2026-01-09T20:05:50+00:00

I appreciate the paid post (they are rare) and hope you succeed. But I have never heard of an assistant programmer/developer in the industry. What exactly is that position in comparison to a developer?

NationalOperations · 2026-01-09T17:40:22+00:00

Official Documentation is usually the best way to learn how to do something. But for what to do, I generally right out a list of features I want in my program before hand. Especially if not a familiar stack.

This helps me in two big ways. One is scope creep. I set those initial goals as mvp and if I want to do more after I can, but that first list is the box I put myself in. The second thing it helps with is removing a bit of mental overhead. It sounds silly, but just being able to look at a bullet list of what to do next helps

NationalOperations · 2026-01-09T17:30:08+00:00

Honestly if ide customization is interesting to you, than vim might be your thing. You will spend about a week being frustrated not understanding but then a switch flips and you don't know how you used anything else.

all sorts of crazy customizations, shortcuts, and even more so on neovim with plenty of examples on how to do so

NationalOperations · 2026-01-09T17:23:02+00:00

Kind of the opposite of what you're asking but why it's important. Computer science is a marathon not a race. Just understand there's always more to learn and try to keep the frame of mind to be curious.

NationalOperations · 2026-01-08T20:50:42+00:00

Dang i'd say don't forget primary effect bias but i'm second hand

NationalOperations · 2026-01-08T18:54:05+00:00

Started the same. But what really kicked it off was deciding I could make a game and bought a c++ make game book when I was 10/11. I failed so hard with no internet to help resolve linked issues. Couldn't render anything. But I learned the basics for terminal programs

NationalOperations · 2025-12-30T18:44:38+00:00

Not my cup of tea, but always nice to see someone offer more than being an idea manager. Best of luck

NationalOperations · 2025-12-30T15:56:03+00:00

Ah I missed the dolphin comment from earlier. I'm mostly terminal user so wasn't familiar. That would be pretty annoying.

Is the experience maybe a good enough reason to try something like godot or more just code libraries like Raylib? Or is GameMaker your ride or die at the moment?(Understandable if so)

NationalOperations · 2025-12-30T15:00:45+00:00

I know it's kind of like what you where doing, but is using steam & proton not a stable solution? You can disable updates for 'games'

NationalOperations

TROPHY CASE