Sorry, I know this isn’t exactly a dev question, but how do I make a project without a tutorial? I know how to make functional code that does simple things, or to solve a problem/question. But nw I want to try to make some projects to add to my portfolio. I’ve found websites with different ideas, and I can find some tutorials, but what if I don’t have a tutorial? Like, what do I do if I want to make something from scratch myself?
If you knew how to start, you wouldn’t be learning anything. So, you are learning. What do you want to learn about as you learn how to architect and develop some software? Web, databases, 3d rendering, gaming, etc.
Chances are you are going to need a framework, library, or many of both. You’ll be learning those too.
Back to architecture. Once you have an idea of what you want to build, we want to get something running fast. Because whats going to happen is you are going to make bad decisions. Lot’s of them and that’s good! You want to fail so many times you learn what not to do, how to debug to keep things moving forward, etc.
So start with a hello world. Serve a webpage. Connect to a database. Draw a square. Then add another and another.
There is some quote out there that the difference between a beginner and master is the master spent X,000 hours failing. At the end of the day its just time spent learning.
You may start over. You may switch tech stacks. You maybe give up when something more interesting comes along.
90% of my personal projects never get completed. I’m usually learning a tool. If I’m reasonably able to use a new tool I’ve learned something. Become really good at learning. Learn to read code. Learn to read type signatures. Learn how the tools you learn work. Learn how to make them do things they were not meant to do. Learn your build system. Learn to setup linting, document your project, setup CI/CD, and so on.
For reference I’m in my 40s. Started coding at 13. Work R&D and greenfield projects for the same fortune 100 for almost 2 decades. Done everything from web, data pipelines, network code, integrated firmware, etc. As you skill up it gets easier. My team usually picks up a new stack every project as I level them up just to expose them to different things.
This is both encouraging and scary. Not getting stuff right just intensifies my imposter syndrome when it comes to programming. But I understand what you mean. Just have to keep trying things and learn from my mistakes.
100% the same boat when I started! I actually deleted a paragraph that said when I was young I wanted to learn how to do things the right way. You eventually learn there is no right way us devs will agree upon. You won’t have opinions on the better way until you’ve done it an objectively bad way.
Reading code helps with this. I’m always looking at my library’s and framework’s implementations. Half my dependencies I swear I patch to make them “better” (subjectively).