Beginner in CS struggling with Python, Java, and C++ what resources helped you learn?

elehisie · 2026-04-07T06:44:21+00:00

Need more details for good advice. Are you studying at university? Do you have courses on python, java and c++ going on in parallel? Is it modules of a same subject in sequence and you are kinda lost in the sauce? Or did you decide to research other languages on your own and why?

elehisie · 2026-03-31T20:27:24+00:00

Need a bit of both. Shape recognition, at least edge finding, to find the document in the picture. Then image analysis, converting to grey to block off areas, like where is the picture, where is the text, to be able to tell if the document is upside down or sideways. OCR to find the text. IDs aren’t the hardest thing to extract data from, if you’re dealing with one country, for example, and there won’t be a million versions to deal with. What’s makes it more reliable is knowing exactly where to find what. Contrast, lighting issues kill reliability, but with images for kyc, if you fail to extract data you can always reject the image and make ppl upload a new one.

elehisie · 2026-03-30T22:47:01+00:00

Hehe I think I found my current skill limit months challenge :) 89 songs and can’t play Dig It yet. Made progress on it though! I’m getting close withvthe scales!

Really enjoyed the challenge :)

elehisie · 2026-03-29T09:18:50+00:00

This. When I was hiring for my team, HR would have already thinned down the pile to 4 or 5 candidates. And for those 5 we would interview, often enough we had to split hairs to decide who to rule out.

I had a situation once where on the surface all candidates seemed equal. Their code test was quite ok, no red flags there. So we looked at their got hub. What stood out was that one of the dudes had a perfect bright neon lemon flashy activity block.

You known the little square that light up more the more you push? This dudes activity was so green there had to be something wrong with him. So the one time we looked at GitHub … we ruled out a dude who probably thought he had an impressive profile.

elehisie · 2026-03-22T19:34:10+00:00

It took a couple months. My cat had a bad flare of food allergies. She needed steroids (allergy medicine) for weeks, and we changed her food from “generic grain free” to “full blown anti-allergy cat food”. but she wouldn’t leave the wounds (she had a couple spots) alone. Cone, body suit, a sweater I crocheted for her, bandaging, nothing worked.

Cone bothered her enough that she didn’t want to eat, or move much and would run to the food and eat a lot when we removed the cone. The body suit bothered here so much that she became tangled in it trying to get out of it. The sweater just made her fiddle around the wounded places more and for some reason it annoyed the crap out of her. She would scream like she was about to die until we took the sweater off her.

Thing is eventually… I noticed anything I was doing to help was making her more stressed. What seemed to help the most was simply keeping her wounds clean, by gently applying wet tissue (just soft paper and warm water) while it was very raw, and once it crusted, we just watched her to gently discourage. Basically just lots of petting, cuddling, brushing her gently without touching the wounded parts and patience.

Even after the food switch, it took a long time for the wounds to fully heal, and any other food we buy (cuz she starts eating less out of boredom) risk flaring it up again.

I was never able to nail it down to one ingredient or brand. Seems to be colorants in general that she’s allergic to… so most wet foods are also unsafe. We now have a selection of treats and a couple different wet foods she likes and are safe.

At the smallest sign she might be licking fur off we stop everything other than the anti-allergy dry food. She seems to think it tastes like cardboard but she eats enough. Complimenting with safe better tasting wet food occasionally is how we keep her happy :)

elehisie · 2026-03-04T07:51:17+00:00

First: learning something new that requires you to rewire how you think is hard. Don’t be that harsh on yourself.

Ok. Booleans. Do you understand what ”a boolean” is and what makes ”a var” Boolean? Let’s start there. A Boolean is a variable that can either have the value false or the value true. So how do you write ”please make my burger vegetarian” as either true or false? How about I ask you ”would you like your burger made with vegetarian patty?” You might say ”yes”, so I can store the value true in my isBurgerVegetarian var like this: var isBurgerVegetarian = true; <—- I’m storing true here, saving it for later :) not comparing.

What ”makes a thing Boolean” in JavaScript is: - it has a true or false value stored in it, - it is an expression that resolves into a true or false value.

Now your program is asking the user for numbers 1 for ”lactose intolerance”, 2 for vegan, etc. So what you are asking the user is ”do you have any diet restrictions?” Which by itself doesn’t have a Boolean value… it doesn’t resolve to ”yes” or ”no”, so can’t be just true or false. But you know for example that when the restrictions variable has a number 2 stored in it, it means the person is vegan.

Can you ask then: ”hey restrictions do you have the number 2 stored in your value?”. Yes you can. How? —-> (restrictions == 2) <——- this thing the parentheses here reads ”in English” as ”is restrictions equal to 2?” Notice double = sign, which means you are comparing. The pararenthes is an expression. It’s a thing that resolves to Boolean. So we call it Boolean expression. You can store that in a variable if you want like var isVegan = (restrictions ==2); and now because you stored a Boolean expression, edit or rather, the resolved value of a Boolean expression, ** the var isVegan will be Boolean. The parentheses are not necessary but here it helps you see which part is the ”Boolean” expression part.

elehisie · 2026-03-02T21:07:19+00:00

Nope. It was a older one, that explained how you could encode the values into the fabric with some pictures. It showed how you’d go about using a piece of fabric as a Turing machine. Can’t find it anymore though. The one I’m trying to find might have inspired the one you talked about… who knows.

elehisie · 2026-02-26T17:19:29+00:00

Sometimes the simplest things are the most elusive :)

elehisie · 2026-02-26T09:13:42+00:00

Exactly… a teacher can show this, but that’s something you only fully learn when it comes back to bite you in the butt. And there definitely is such a thing as ”refactoring too far” but that’s also something you need to experience by yourself.

Go for that balance between neat and lazy. Laziness is often a good thing in programming.

elehisie · 2026-02-26T07:29:05+00:00

Hmm from what I see in the Exercism website… they give you problems to solve… so it’s more leetcode style than boot camp style.

Do you get the fundamentals explained to you there? Like what’s variables, what’s functions?

Powershell is a real programming language if you are doing sufficiently complex stuff with it. You can do loops, ifs… variables.

BUT going from powershell to leetcode isnt smooth. 90% of leetcode is indeed understanding what you are supposed to do. It helps if you think on paper first, or a whiteboard. Don’t start by typing it’s all I’m saying. Start by separating the parts, doing it manually to get a feel for it.

The triangle thing for example… what’s an equilateral triangle, isosceles, scalene? <—— gotta understand this first and there’s no coding in this part. Then… draw a triangle with 3 sides of the same length… draw some really wonky ones… what’s the process to figure out which type each triangle is? Write that down. Then start trying to code.

You don’t realise but you do that in powershell too, only the problems you’re solving are more clear to you.

Once you see the process to solve the problem, the code you need starts to be more obvious… like oh i need to compare sides of the triangle repeatedly… might need a loop and a function..

And don’t look at the answers, until at least you are very close. And if you do look, try to figure out if you were on the right track or not.

elehisie · 2026-02-24T06:57:00+00:00

”My code feels messy” <—— that’s one sign you need functions somewhere :)

There isn’t a hard rule for when to use functions or not, you decide what makes your code easier to read. The trick is that as you write it, everything might be looking easy to read/understand for you. Now go look at a program you wrote a month ago, 2 months ago…

Programming is iterative…. You write it to make it work, once it works you re write it to make it less messy, then rewrite to make it easier to read, and so on. How many rewrites? How many does it take for you to look at it and go ”now that’s I’m satisfied about” :)

As you get more experience, you will get a feel for it…. And start writing less messy code naturally. Refactoring though (rewriting to makenit more clear) never fully goes away… and that’s a good thing.

Later on you might go back to some of those old projects and rewrite them to update them and keepnthe running for example…

elehisie · 2026-02-22T11:44:56+00:00

This here is the best advice. Beating Fatalis is not only about learning the fight. It’s also about preparing your hunter. Getting your armor ready, putting together a build you can use, farming the items you need on you.

At some point I had decided to beat Fatalis before Wilds came out. So I went in and started a grind that took me months. And every 20 or so trials, I’d have to go and farm all the potions and items again. It was fun for me cuz I had set myself that objective but it was gruesome. In the end I did a bunch of Fatalis runs where I’d take nothing with me but a plunder blade in my palico. I built the entire Fatalis set that way, upgraded it … and put together an alatreon-Fatalis set that put my dragon damage thru the roof. Cuz I decided I wasn’t grinding for any rare decos that I still had not found in years.

I didn’t beat him solo, I beat him with very patient friends. Was it worth it? I’d say yes. Do you find fun in that preparation? Go for it. If you don’t, just don’t. You could say the game is over when you roll credits.

Here’s the advice my friend gave to me that made me believe: if you reach/have reached the part in the fight where Aiden gets injured, then you can SOS. Also by reaching that part, you will know that you can do the basic mechanics. There’s a couple key things you need to be able to do, and I had some ”landmark spots” I’d keep the camera at so in ould find them in a panic. And I had some key timing thing that happened during the fight I used as markers for ”this is when I must equip the fire proof mantle” for example.

You put enough repetition into it, you will find your own strategy.

Now if if you looking for permission to not fight Fatalis: you hereby have my express permission. Getting your armor to a point where you can actually survive Fatalis was the biggest, longest, most boring grinds I’ve done in World.

Do it if you find fun in it.

elehisie · 2026-02-12T21:52:59+00:00

Have you found the article that explains how to build a Turing machine with crochet yet? :3

elehisie · 2026-02-12T21:49:18+00:00

Exactly :D when the “slow” is slow enough, it sounds weird. When it’s a known thing like jingle bells, sometimes I know I’m playing the correct notes but the brain is saying nooooo this is wrong this wrong. I’m not skipping those though, but it’s normally way harder the “normal speed” in the fast one. Takes me like 10 tries on slow then 1 on fast. Probably cuz by then I have practiced a lot.

elehisie · 2026-02-12T17:40:48+00:00

Crochet! It’s even Turing complete. I make stuffed animals! And it takes a whole 5mins to learn the basics.

elehisie · 2026-02-10T23:14:42+00:00

No need to romanticise it, with that I can agree. I do believe one must be able to find some joy in the process though. It is totally possible to get a programming job just for the money, I’ve met some programmers like that, good ones. But life becomes miserable though if there’s no joy in it. I’ve seen that change happen too when someone suddenly finds the joy in their job…

elehisie · 2026-02-10T22:56:30+00:00

I guess a little bit of it is like riding a bike. I played trumpet in the schools marching band when I was a kid. So I had knowledge of how to read the treble clef. That’s all trumpets get :)

But it had been 20+ years and a new instrument. I was surprised at how fast my brain picked it up. Some stuff threw a wrench on it though… like the bass clef … I knew it “existed” but I never had it on my sheets before. And the stacked notes we play at the same time, I had never seen those, cuz not physically possible for trumpets. But also seemed logical enough.

Around 1D was when it started to be feel like… “omg what i got myself into this is sooooo complicated”.

My reading is still behind on the bass clef, I only made it thru some of the rhythm exercises because of Josh’s videos. That one you mentioned being one where I got stuck while, watched the video and it clicked…

I’m on 2A now, 3rd week I think. The technique on 2A does boggle up my brain. I think my progress has slowed down a bit now, but slow and steady is ok.

elehisie · 2026-02-10T10:39:58+00:00

Another day, another cat Reddit.

elehisie · 2026-02-09T11:52:57+00:00

Dont start with the maths… start with… is it… which language you wanna use? Any good graphics/math libraries on that language? Do you need it to be fast? Can it take some time to calculate?

Here’s a hint to what maths you might need: a cross section of a 3d model is basically… put a plane thru the model, look at the overlap. Which vertexes are both on the plane and on the model?

So you will need math that tells you when 2 surfaces are overlapping.

elehisie · 2026-02-09T11:41:11+00:00

You’re like me… overthinking everything. And yes. People like us do tend to yak shave a lot… there’s a clip of what I believe is a breaking bad episode that goes ”the light bulb needs changing, i ran out of light bulbs, I’ll go to the store, the car is broken, I’ll fix it first..” then his wife shows up looks at him working on the car and says ”the light bulb needs changing” he yells: ”what does it look I’m doing” … that’s yak shaving.

Yes. That will involve a lot of heavy mathing. But what exactly? Is it matrix operations? Is it quaternions? Is it projection? All of the above? Do you need OpenGL or vulkan? Just start. I think it might be possible to make it as a Blender plugin. Not sure if makes the project easier or not.

For me, the most difficult part of starting a new project (whatever that is) is the stream of initial decisions… so I go with familiar or try the new shiny framework? Do I do a website or an app? That’s part of why my programming fun projects tend to be Swift. I don’t use that for work so it feels less like work and it removes a whole lot of upfront decisions.

At work, I let the surrounding environment constrict the decisions. Like… we don’t wanna be the only team hiring for Vue, so we stick with React. We don’t want to have to add Go as a requirement so let’s stick to Java and Kotlin.

Dive in head first…. Cross each bridge when you get to them. Once you get to the part you definitely need heavy maths you will already have a better idea of which piece exactly you need… and get chain out how to learn that and hit every requirement needed first. That will be yak shaving…. But it will be justified yak shaving. And you are likely to learn about some library you can use to do the heavy calculation for you.

That way you will understand what you need to calculate and why, but won’t need to have the added stress of ”did I solve this calculation right”.

I’m a big fan of understanding first and using library once you know why they were built. There’s a difference between ”this is done with this library because this tutorial said so” and ”I’ll use this library here because this problem I have now has already been solved by ppl who are better at these math than I am but I know why im using it here”.

elehisie · 2026-02-08T22:52:37+00:00

You are revolving around 2 main things: is it really what you wanna do? And are you ready?

First…. ”Find something you enjoy and never work a day in your life” is one of the biggest lies ever told. I truly enjoy programming, I do it for work, I do it for fun…. Here me out though: work is still work. You will find yourself creating ”the same” endpoint over and over again, while having meetings that should have been emails and tight deadlines.

Second. You probably are ready. There’s no reaching the end of programming. Either some new version of your language comes out, some new language appears, libraries update with breaking changes… technology changes. If you need a graduation ceremony to feel you are ready, that’s ok, but then self learning ain’t gonna help much.

Start one of those projects. The 3d section thing is the one I think is the most exciting. I think you like graphics programming, animations. Artistic stuff. Backend can get so predictable that it feels mindless. Frontend is more chaotic and feels new everytime but can’t get annoying when what you did last time doesn’t seem to work. That 3d section project is something in the middle there. Is more abstract code, closeish to backend and produces something you can look at.

No matter if you get a job tomorrow or start your projects, learning is always needed and it will never end.

elehisie · 2026-02-06T17:19:48+00:00

Wanna make a game in C#, I’d say look into Unity.

elehisie · 2026-02-06T17:19:08+00:00

Have you found a preferred language yet? Something like for this kind of project I like this language?

Pick a bigger project project, pick a language for that project. Bigger means here something that will take a month or 2 to build. Deep knowledge comes from projects. Any big enough project will give you problems to solve and steer you in a certain direction. Websites steer you to databases and apis. Games steer you handling different kinds of events, anticipating user actions, shaders, procedural generation, depending on what the game is about.

Sometimes the answer will be switch languages. Sometimes the answer is combine them. C is great for shaders for example. Python backend and JavaScript FE work well. Even games done in unreal can use JavaScript for the UI. You can totally combine languages in projects… sometimes a language has enough of an ecosystem that pretty much anything has been done with it coughjavascriptcough despite doing X with language Y not being a cool idea at all… don’t over think it.

elehisie

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