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Showerthought: I spent a month trying to learn from big project tutorials before switching to tiny practice scripts
I kept trying to follow those 'build a full website in a day' videos, but I'd get lost after the first 20 minutes. About six weeks ago, I switched to writing ten-line scripts that do one thing, like count words in a file or flip a coin 100 times. The difference was huge. I actually finished things and understood every part. Now I feel way more solid on the basics before trying bigger stuff. Has anyone else found that starting super small helped them get it?
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sage_lewis101mo agoMost Upvoted
Totally get what you mean about finishing those ten-line scripts! @thead44 makes a good point about big projects having real problems to fix. But how do you balance that? Like, do you now feel ready to spot those same problems in a bigger mess of code because you learned the pieces first?
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dakota_rivera14d ago
Nah, I gotta disagree with that. I think @sage_lewis10 is onto something when he says big projects have real problems to fix, because fighting through a broken API or a tangled database teaches you how to actually debug and think on your feet. Tiny scripts are nice for feeling good, but they don't prepare you for the messy reality of someone else's code throwing errors at every turn.
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