I've been trying to find a new career and I've dabbled back and forth in programming over the years, but not getting very far. It's difficult to learn on my own and I have no one I could potentially use as a mentor. I was thinking it would be nice for some of us, who might want to learn to code or help others learn, to use something like Replit, our own discord server, or anything else to help each other.
In the past, I have found most discord servers unhelpful. I'm hoping some stackers might be more helpful.
Anyone?
this territory is moderated
I don't have the time available to commit (no pun intended) to being anyone's mentor. However, I do like to chime in to the occasional technical discussion here and there. If you start asking questions about software engineering here on SN, I think there are many people like me that would chime in to provide support.
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545 sats \ 1 reply \ @kytt OP 28 Jan
I feel like there's not a good place to ask. Even with a territory, that could get clogged up. Some sort of chat (like Discord/Replit) would come in handy - unless SN eventually adds something of the sort.
As far as general questions about SE, absolutely I would use SN for that.
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You should join the PlebDevs discord: https://discord.gg/t4NkDKRCK8
Check their website out here: https://www.plebdevs.com/
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I'm down,
So far on my dev journey i've
  • completed the plebdev course
  • submitted a bug fix for LNbits
  • made it to day 25 in 100 days of python (replit)
  • Got stuck on the Nostr Dev course (section 8)
Recently i've switched focus to
  • Nix Os
  • V4V (Primal/Wavlake/Fountain)
  • 3d Printing
  • Bitcoin job search
On the coding side of things, I really want to get involved in
  • fedi things
  • Cashu stuff
  • Nostr things
  • Lightning stuff
  • AI things
I'm not necessarily looking for a coding job, just having fun building and learning useful skills/tools suitable for the sovereign individual.
Hit me up if you want to talk about your coding journey, or want to work on a project together.
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338 sats \ 1 reply \ @kytt OP 28 Jan
Bookmarked. Since I just learned about PlebDev, I'll try to go through a few of those first before I email you.
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If you have some knowledge you can find volunteer projects to contribute there. It'll add some experience to your CV and understanding how development in team works
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Yo I just saw this!
I run the plebdevs community on discord and the ~devs territory here on stackernews
I know that discord servers and online courses are super oversaturated but that's what we've got so far along with bitcoin/lightning focused technical workshops, general help with blockers, Q&A, and I do 1:1's a few times a week as well (all accessed through the discord and all free)
I struggled to learn to code on my own for a long time and it really was finding community and a more structured approach for me to finally make progress. That's why I wanted to start plebdevs to help people on the earliest part of their coding journey that wanna work on bitcoin/lightning or just regular app development and make it a bit easier and less lonely
Hope any of this can be helpful 🤝
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Bookmarked
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I been trying to learn to code as a New Year’s resolution since 2020. I finished so many courses in JavaScript and python. Read books and wrote some pretty crappy programs. I try to practice everyday using DataCamp but just lack the time and energy to focus and be effective. But I agree doing this alone is a lonely journey I often thought I could use code and pick up a side hustle but I just get lazy or do other things like reading or working on my fitness.
I am starting the base58 free course this week and hopefully I’ll hit a grove again.
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A place I found to be extremely helpful is chatting over IRC, I've helped others and been helped myself, the best one I've found is the #programming channel on LiberaChat.
There's usually not much to do apart from practicing, I highly recommend to ignore books and whatnot and stick to simpler tutorials, the actual code experience and first hand experimentation should be what you need to prioritize.
If you still need to choose a language, Python and JavaScript are the best to begin with, Python is a good option for understanding the general syntax while JavaScript, apart from being a bit more verbose, is the simplest to work with as you just need to press F12 and go to the "Console" tab on any browser to have a fully working live environment.
For the kind of software you might want to start with, I think videogames are the best type, they let you have immediate feedback and most bugs are easy to notice without even looking at the code (like a character moving to the opposite direction of what you intended), it also help to write code that's made to be simpler and faster than other type of software, as performance and the resources are easier to handle (drawing a square on a screen is much simpler that building a web app with a database).
Those are advices based on my personal experience and I've used the same approach to teach others at work where I work as a web developer fulltime for years, I have never went to any specialized schools, never paid for any online courses or book, I just used random videos and played around by myself.
I've written some time ago a collection of advice for beginners here on SN: #360597
But, as I got swept up with private stuff, I halted it at that. Now, seeing your post alongside others with a desire to least to code, I think what I can share can help many people greatly, so I'll try to get back to work back on it soon.
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I have very little experience as a programmer or programming in general, but I think here you could find someone who can teach you or valuable resources, have you tried your luck on Hacker.news as well?
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