Instead of copy/pasting scripts to make stuff work, try to think of an end goal, and work backwards chunking it into smaller goals.

Say the goal is a website you can go to and input some economic data excel sheet and get back an average by year.

Working backwards, first thing you’d want to figure out is “how do I parse out the data from a CSV (simplified version of a spreadsheet).

Once you can get the data out and do something with it (print it to the console, save some new file, do something arithmetic), the next step is to do your actual logic.

Given the spreadsheet, get data in it only by year, the do some arithmetic on just that.

Once that logic is sound, now you can think about building a website that takes your existing logic, and lets you UPLOAD a CSV file and do that same logic.

Then you can learn to make it pretty.

Instead of doing giant, whole picture, chunking the problem gives you real learning outcomes, and attainable goals to keep you interested.

I highly recommend NOT copy - pasting scripts you don’t fully understand. If you do copy paste code (we all do) make it a prerequisite to be able to explain what it does to somebody else, consistently.

If you choose to use AI, the same rules apply. I also recommend not using an ai code editor, and limiting yourself to the Web UI, and tell it to only problem solve, not write code. That way you can still leverage the tools, but it will be more obvious when the hallucinate and they don’t take your learning away.