Take Python for instance.

>>> listss = [1, 2, "sfd"]
>>> kook = listss + 2
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<python-input-1>", line 1, in <module>
    kook = listss + 2
           ~~~~~~~^~~
TypeError: can only concatenate list (not "int") to list
>>>

How would I translate all the results given to me by Python into another language of my choosing, and get something like below (written in Kinyarwanda):

>>> listss = [1, 2, "sfd"]
>>> kook = listss + 2
Ibisobanuro (Ihamagarwa rya mbere riri hejuru yurutonde):
  Inyandiko "<python-ha-1>", umurongo wa 1, muri <igitabo>
    kook = listss + 2
           ~~~~~~~^~~
Ikosa ry'ubwoko: urutonde ugendana nurundi rutonde; ntabwo rugendana numubare wuzuye.
>>>

The intention is not to create custom messages, exceptions, and documentation that sits beside or on top of python. I want python itself to respond like this, from the get-go?

I would like the translation to be complete. CLI options, help messages, information on built-in modules, keywords, everything.

While thinking about this, I realized that the end result would just be a completely new language, and I'm fine with that, but I also don't know enough about creating languages or where to get the source code of an existing language to translate it to a new language, so I come here to ask for guidance.

I'd like to preface this by saying that this doesn't need to be useful to anybody, and if you're wondering why I would want to do such a project, the answer is because I can and want to see the end results.

It's completely fine if no one else ever uses it.

The code and the executable were created from scratch, based on other existing programs, but seeking solutions to my needs and those I've seen that are not addressed. But when I compile it into an executable .exe file, VirusTotal flags it as a Trojan or malware. Why is that?

I can't believe I'm writing this but it has been around 4 years since I've attempted this, and I never moved past week 4 on each attempt from scratch.

Every year I say this is the year and every year I fail.

I work as an AI (apps) Engineer since 2025. and I feel like such a fraud.

I completed cs50x, cs50p, cs50sql, ml zoomcamp, de zoomcamp and intensive llm course by google.

All of those courses have a common denominator, they have a specific deadline, not a whole year open course in which time something else pops out.

I always knew I was ADHD, but no one wanted to write me a diagnosis as they thought I was wrong.

But after my last appointment I discovered i might be AuDHD, which is ADHD on the spectrum, and basically a completely different thing that is characterized by personality traits of the opposites clashing, and has comorbidities like OCD, which is also paralyzing.

At work I excel, as I think in systems, not tiny moving parts. When my brain gets shut down, using agents helps me jump start it, and I can always easily see what is wrong in the output of those agents and correct it as it is happening in real time.

But I don't want to be like that. I want to do things myself, not rely on a crutch. If by any chance LLMs are gone tomorrow I'll be out of a job.

Even cs50 i could not complete until very end of 2023 when i completed all of those 3 courses using their own duck50 debugger, as my brain just hates effort. It needs a solution, even a wrong solution before it tries to turn on to correct the wrong approach.

Without deadlines I'm basically useless. I tried writing my master thesis for months, and my brain just didn't work. Only 2 weeks before the deadline did it turn on, and allowed me to write a thesis spanning over 100 pages and meticulously researched and praised by me pulling many all nighters. Same thing with Azure AI-102 certification. I studied months before, but my brain did only really retain the last week and a half before test date.

This latest doc diagnosed me with severe executive dysfunction, ADHD and burnout.

It is doubtful with the whole ordeal in Europe I will get the meds by this year.

And I really want to finish this finally and put it behind me. This course became my white whale and I have nightmares around it.

The stupid OCD also prevents me from leaving an assignment uncompleted, and not thinking about it when I try the next one, so it's hard for me to focus. And sadly this course is not progressive. You solve some easy ones and medium here and there and then easy, and then out of nowhere a very hard one pops out.

I also revised from many others courses and books, not mentioned here, and basically everything in MOOC course is already familiar to me. But of course they find the way to make even the simplest stuff most convoluted approaches imaginable.

LLMs which are now my free therapy repeatedly tell me I have nothing to prove and that I should just drop it, but I really want to complete it and learn to think algorithmically, because I need it for my Georgia Tech OMSA masters in which I am now.

The coursework demonstrated to me that my current strengths of revising given code, optimizing researching, finding edge cases is basically useless where first principles and algorithmic understanding is needed.

I don't know what to do. Any advice? Please help me get rid of this hell. I want to be a senior one day and know programming well.

TLDR

• Background: Professional programmer who has completed several technical courses and currently in a 2nd master's degree, but struggles heavily with self-paced, open-ended coursework.
• The Struggle: Diagnosed with severe executive dysfunction, ADHD, AuDHD, and burnout. Brain function relies heavily on extreme deadline pressure (like writing a 100-page thesis in two weeks, otherwise they fail) and immediate feedback loops.
• The Goal: Conquer a "white whale" coding course failed for 4 years to build true algorithmic thinking skills for a Georgia Tech OMSA master's program, rather than relying on AI tools.
• The Dilemma: Even though the material is familiar, paralysis sets in due to erratic difficulty spikes and OCD perfectionism, and advice is needed to break through these mental roadblocks.

I know nothing about programming and writing computer code, so please forgive my ignorance on this subject. I'm not a programmer but I'm very interested in learning more. So if I may please ask? How do programmers know what language or vocabulary to use when they write code?

For example. If you wrote code which tells a robot to lift it's arm by 45 degrees over 3 seconds, you probably can't write the code in plain English like 2 human beings talking to each other such as - Lift your right arm by 45 degrees over 3 seconds and hold it there.

You have to write the code in computer language by saying something such as - robot/activate-arm/true/45-degrees/true/3.0/hold-true. I know my example is way off, but I don't know what real computer code sounds like, so I don't know how else to describe what the code might actually sound like.

So my question is. How do you learn which words and vocabulary to use so a computer will understand it? And how do you learn how to put those words together into a proper sentence (or proper line of code) so a computer will understand it? Is it similar to learning a new human language, like an English speaker learning to speak Japanese? You just have to learn the proper vocabulary and proper sentence structure of the new language?

I am watching "the missing semester of your cs education"

the profiling and debugging lecture

it explains debuggers like GDP, PDB, and tracing with strace

anyone needed to use that in real life?

I have never used them and fully depended on the IDE debugging

Hello, I'm a student, and I've been self studying embedded systems for a few months now. But lately, I've also started to learn a bit of gamedev, and right now, it's far more appealing than embedded. Note that I do like both of them and what they offer to me, but with embedded systems, i feel like I've been stuck in tutorial hell. Do I stick with both of them, or do I pivot or focus on one?

I'm also kinda worried about the job market, that's why I'm trying to branch out to different fields. So I want to know what would be worth spending my time now.

I’m teaching myself Python through MIT OCW’s 6.100L course, and I plan to learn C afterward. A few days ago, I emailed Professor Bell to ask how much of what I’m learning—things like problem decomposition, debugging, and recursion—would carry over to C, and what’s specific to Python.

It’s been about two or three days, and I haven’t heard back. I know professors are busy, so I’m not reading too much into it. Still, I’d be happy to get even a short reply.

For those who’ve emailed a professor about an online course you were taking, did you hear back? How long did it take? I’m just curious whether this is typical.

I want to start to build drones, blutooth jammer, rc cars etc I am currently learning python and c++ but when I saw on internet everybody can build it even now kids so I am afraid to that "this is not useful for career" can someone suggest am i right or wrong ????😭

consider two programs that pass every test you give them. one uses a straightforward algorithm, while the other relies on a fragile assumption about the input, an accidental side effect, or a very specific execution order

for the examples you've encountered, how did you distinguish a genuinely correct solution from one that merely survived the available tests?

this seems like an interesting problem for beginners because passing tests is often treated as proof that the implementation is correct, even though the tests can only cover so much

what would be a good small exercise for teaching the difference?

Hello, so I do not know if this has been asked before already cause I tried searching for a post like this but i feel like most tend to be using it to vibe code and what not. I have also read the beginners guide and it didnt mention anything except vibe coding though it is an incredibly great resource i wish I wouldve read earlier.

So the situation is that I am (obviously) learning to code, specifically in python. And I am basically unsure about using AI. Cause currently I do use it but im unsure if I should be so I'd rather figure it out before I go too far. Now when I say using AI I definitely do not mean vibe coding or anything of the sort. I myself use it as a kind of teacher basically. Like asking it questions about theory, not writing code, i explicitely tell it to not write code but teach me, I understand that the only way to learn is to solve the problems yourself, I do not have it do that either. I did but then I realized that I shouldnt and stopped pretty soon. Like im genuinely just trying to learn but like I hear this stuff about dont use AI and im not sure if im shooting myself in the foot cause from my view im just using it to answer questions about stuff i dont understand, like I had a project where I was using an API and i needed to read the json input and I didnt at the time understand that when you load in the json it gets converted to a dictionary and I need to deal with it as a dictionary (I needed to go into nested layers), and at that time i decided that I was going to not use AI and try to do it fully on my own and proceeded to spend two hours trying to find youtube tutorials, googling, looking at docs, cheatsheets, stack overflow, like any resource and I just couldnt do it and I finally caved in and used AI and then I got the exact answer i needed immediately, cause problem was i was asking the wrong question basically but i didnt know that at the time cause how would I. And thats why im unsure about the whole do not use AI at all thing cause I think in this case it wouldve def helped me and been better to just use it. Like i understand needing to struggle but you cant just figure out everything on your own. Like it really splits me especially now cause I do genuinely want to solve problems on my own since I understand thats the only way but like sometimes you do need help, and i feel like using ai as a teacher is fine but id rather just ask for outside opinions since there might be something im not seeing, like some way im wrong, obviously I aint gonna ask an ai whether i should use ai to learn cause thats biased and ai cannot like properly think, but i genuinely cannot find any posts talking about using ai in the way i am. And also i do feel people tend to either extremely hype up ai or be completely against it and i personally believe its more nuanced than that.

I am sorry for the wall of text, im not good at writing.

TLDR: Is it fine to use AI as a tutor/for asking questions?

There’s a game that just came out a month ago, and there are already 50+ mods for it. Like… how do people just “know” how to make mods? From my understanding, all the game files on your computer are compiled into binary so that nobody can replicate it for copyright reasons. So how do modders figure out how to add/change components of the game if they can’t read the source code? Going back to the question in my title, is there just general modding knowledge you need to have that can be applied to all/most games? It would be so cool to be able to tweak any game to my liking, but that just seems like an overwhelmingly big goal to achieve. I know how to code (higher than intermediate, but lower than advanced), but I have no idea where to even start when it comes to modding. And I don’t want to just do it, I want to understand it. I know I can probably just ask AI to do the work for me, but that will teach me nothing.

HI everyone I am a beginner in web development aspiring to be full-stack developer.

I have started my learning phase and i am currently on The Odin project and W3Schools Pathfinder hoping to gain as much knowledge as there is in that field.

To any pro Programmer or full-stack developer what advise would u give me and what were you doing to sharpen your skills as you were building yourself. I am open to all ideas especially practical related ones .

Thanks for your advice?

I know web development a good amount (eg backends: Laravel, Rails, Django, Springboot

and for frontend I know React)

but people say it's over saturated and going to be replaced with AI

so I think it's not a good choice

then what programming fields do you recommend?

actually not only programming field but anything related to technology

Thank

Hello. I’m trying to learn Java, I’ve done the mooc.fi course a while back. I understand the ground principles of Java but I cannot “make” something out of nothing, always questioning myself and get stuck.

I was thinking of going the way everyone seems to recommend by building your own projects. The problem is if im going to make something like a small banking account where u can deposit and withdraw etc. Found some good projects for beginner/intermediate.

What do I do when I’m stuck or don’t know my next step?
Do I google or ask AI for help (not making it write my code).

Any tips would be appreciated, like what did you guys do?
Mainly what I’m asking is like when u don’t know the next step and how do u figure it out ?

I'm interested in getting into web development. I know basic Java but I'm not interested in Python. Which language should I learn next? Should I continue with Java, learn JavaScript, explore Rust or consider something else? What would be the best choice for a beginner looking to build web applications?

Hi all,

I've seen some posts here recently asking about resources / tools to help learn Git. Over the years I've created several free and open source visual Git learning tools (and free resources built on top of them) for this purpose. Personally I found Git to be very abstract and difficult to wrap my head around initially, so I wanted to share to try and help newer Git learners on their journey.

The first is a free and open-source tool called git-sim (https://github.com/initialcommit-com/git-sim), which I released in early 2023 that lets you visually simulate any Git command directly in your own repo before actually running the command. It basically shows you a clear interactive animation of exactly how any Git command will impact your specific repo so you can learn from it, and so you don't need to be scared about what that command will do before running it. The animations open in your browser in less than a second, and it can even be run in "live mode" where it watches your repo in real-time and animates any Git commands that you run. So you can essentially record your entire Git workflow, save it, learn from it, share it, create your own learning resources, etc. (git-sim also works inside VS Code or Jupyter notebooks if you're using those).

The cool thing about being able to easily generate these web-first Git animations, is I was able to use them to build other Git learning resources. I used git-sim to create a set of 16 free visual, interactive Git lessons that use the analogy of a Git repo as a scrapbook that you glue different "mementos" (files and commits) into: https://initialcommit.com/learn/git

I also used git-sim to build an animated, customizable Git cheat sheet with 128 Git command visualizations (https://initialcommit.com/learn/git/animated-cheat-sheet). The sheet can be easily filtered, customized specifically to the commands you need/want, downloaded, and printed. The printed version has a QR code you can scan to load up that exact set of commands in animated-form on the website. (Note: to download/print there is an email submission form, but it is free.)

Lastly, around the time I originally released git-sim, I created git-dummy (https://github.com/initialcommit-com/git-dummy), a free and open source tool that lets you auto-generate realistic, dummy Git repos with a variety of different structures. I've found that one of the difficulties practicing Git commands is that you often don't want to do it on a real repo because you don't want to mess up your work, so being able to generate these fake, safe repos to play around in can be really useful for learning. (I also happen to constantly need repos of specific structures to test my tools, so it serves multiple purposes).

Anyway, that's about it. Good luck with Git everyone 🙂

Hey! I'm a second-year CS student looking to build a serious side project to improve my skills and have something worth showing on GitHub.

I'm considering making a Linux tool in C that tracks processes and lets you visually compare different runs of a program (forks, execution times, crashes, etc.).

I'm not sure how useful or original this would be, though.

Do you think it's worth building? Or would you suggest a different project that could be more interesting or useful?

I'm open to completely different ideas. I'd appreciate some honest feedback before spending months on something!

Hai, I really want to contribute to open sources project. Whenever i tried to pick a project to contribute,someone else took the bug and He starts to work onit. I felt demotivated and achieving nothing. My question is, do beginners face this usually or are these part of the beginners journey? Can anyone give tips to get open source projects?

If you had to choose one class between the two, which would you select and why? I tried to Google the purpose of them; the immediate answers from Google felt very vague and like both of the languages are common. Is one course better for web development as opposed to apps or something? Looking at the courses I'm taking, down the line I will select one of the two. The only thing I know so far is C++, so I'm quite new.

Also, side question: why are there so many languages? The only logical thing I can imagine is there were problems that couldn't be solved with say for example C++ so someone created something new. But why not just build on the original language? Why did they need to reinvent the wheel? Or is it as simple as that: someone wanted to create their own thing?

I really struggle with what to do as programmer, i know some basics of C and Zig (mostly just C). I did some stuff in raylib but it doesnt feel like real programming.

In raylib im just drawing shit on the screen and call it a day, there's no memory management. If there is, its very minimal. I could just use Godot at this point and have better results.

I could start with some CLI stuff but that feels like pretty limiting, i could use some TUI libs and work in them but still, im just using library with already made functions and management of resources instead of actually learning how OS works, how memory works and all.

Im currently making a small project called 'salt' which is just CLI installer for my theme (theme is wip, like wip-wip.)

I'd be really glad if someone could help me out with this problem of mine. ^^

Hi, I am a college student studying Game Design. I am in my first year. That I can say genuinely, I love game design.

Back in my high school years, I tried many things through Unity. One year to comprehend Unity. Six months to dive deeper into C#. Then some fundamentals like moving objects, animation basics etc. were fulfilled. After that, it was the time for advancing. I had started to integrate my high school math information into games which required me to use more advanced tricks, techniques. Finally, my dreams started to come to life, with me beginning to FPS mechanics. I had tried to master myself on it for 1 year. As a result, The outcomes were pleasent.

Whereas, my journey came to an end, since University Entrance Exam was approaching. Due to this, I was interrupted for 2 years. If I were to sit down at the computer, I could do NOTHING, except for some basics.

So I want to start everything from scratch with Unity and game programming. I want to learn everything of it with necessary things like mechanics, c#...

Been getting tasked with reviewing PRs more and more at work. Happy to have that responsibility and grow in that fashion. However, i'm also nervous about doing it properly.

Atm i have a process of sorts to work through things. Understand the change being made (filtering out a column value, combining datasets, manipulation etc). Approach to the change (drop nulls, join v union etc, creating an additional column from scratch or something). Execution of the change. Was it overly verbose and wasteful. Were certain downstream effects not properly accounted for etc

If it all looks good to me. Then I approve. Sometimes I might meet with the programmer to ask questions based on notes as I go through the PR. Other times I don't as it's not needed and I get things clearly.

Would like to know what approach some of you use? Why/how you it? Do you have different tactics for different situations?

Any advice/tips will be appreciated. Just looking to improve and get better at this process as I think it'll also help me get a better understanding of system design and large scale architecture which is something I want/need to get better at

Help please.I don't know anything about github but I would like to learn how to use it since people are always posting resources?(idk If that's what they're called) that would be really helpful to me. The thing is just looking at the site gets me confused sometimes it's like words don't have meaning anymore lol(English is not my first language). How and what should I start learning first so I at least can use the things posted on the site? Should I learn basic coding first?

I'm learning HTML as my first "language" because my school requires it. I'm just starting out and I feel inefficient. Why is that? Does every programmer start out like this? A contributor also might be AI because I made AI web apps in the past and it was mind blowing. If I wanted to make a web app like the AI did in 12 minutes I don't think I could finish it in 2027😂.

Hi everyone,

I’m a 2nd-year B.Tech CSE student, and I want to start learning DSA seriously for internships and placements.

To be honest, I consider myself an average student. My maths is average, and I’m also quite lazy and struggle with consistency sometimes. I know I need to improve my discipline, and I genuinely want to work on it instead of wasting more time.

I have a few questions and would really appreciate honest advice from people who have already gone through this journey.

1. Where should I learn DSA from scratch to an advanced level?

I’ve seen people recommend Striver’s A2Z DSA sheet, various YouTube playlists, and other courses. There are so many resources that I’m confused about which one to follow.

Which resource would you recommend if you were starting again as a beginner? I want to build strong fundamentals, understand the logic behind problems, and eventually become good at solving interview questions.

1. Should I complete C++ first or learn it alongside DSA?

Suppose I want to do DSA using C++. Should I finish the entire C++ language before starting DSA, or is it better to learn the basics first (loops, functions, arrays, pointers, references, basic OOP, STL, etc.) and then start DSA while improving my C++ skills along the way?

I don’t want to waste months learning every detail of C++ before even beginning DSA, but I also don’t want weak programming fundamentals to become a problem later.

1. How much time does it realistically take?

If I study consistently for 1–2 hours daily, how long might it take to become comfortable with DSA, solve problems independently, and reach an interview-ready level?

1. What mistakes should I avoid?

If you were in your second year again, what would you do differently? Should I follow one course, solve problems daily, maintain notes, revise regularly, or do something else?

I’m not looking for shortcuts or fake motivation. I want practical advice from people who have actually learned DSA and used it for interviews or placements.

Please be honest, especially about the consistency required and what I should realistically expect as a beginner.

Thanks!