this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago (5 children)

I am too dumb brain for programming :(

I've tried a few times in the past to get into it but I just get overwhelmed. I'm frankly amazed by and so thankful for all the programmers who contribute to all of the great libre software I use. I am stuck at the level of knowing more about computers than essentially everyone I know or encounter, while simultaneously being a complete and utter noob to anyone who actually understands computing. I just know how to use search engines and follow instructions written by people smarter than me.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago

Don't discount yourself. I'm dumb as shit. There's a lot of dumb programmers. We just know a handful of things and kept beating our heads at it until suddenly, it works.

Keep picking up things every year and after a few years, suddenly you know more than others and they keep promoting you.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

I just know how to use search engines and follow instructions written by people smarter than me.

99% of being a programmer is knowing what to Google, so you're halfway there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Everyone is overwhelmed when learning to program or even learning a new framework. This is normal. We just do our best to ignore that feeling and keep going. You will often fail and sometimes spend hours wondering why something doesn't work. But eventually it will become easier and you will be able to make cool things. Python and JavaScript are good languages for beginners (but choose one).

If you would like to contribute to Libre Software, there are other ways you can do it too. You can join some chat rooms for a specific project and help people when they have issues. You can help to document things or help translate stuff.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

It's a lot of abstraction to ingest, keep exposing yourself to deeper topics until it becomes natural.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Learn with the help of LMMs (AI chatbots), it’s awesome, just let it generate some code, read it, understand it, and try make the code better, more beautiful and/or more efficient. Add some feature you miss in the code, don’t hesitate to ask your LMMs follow up question, it won’t laugh at stupid questions, it is just great.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

However, do keep in mind that LLMs regularly pull language an library features out of their asses that have no direct correspondent in practice. I'd use the LLMs to generate small snippets of code, giving them a small and restricted set of requirements to minimize hallucinations.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Yea, encountered that as well (depending on LLM model). Mostly, it is enough to just feed the exception output back into the LLM thread and it will Fix it’s bugs, or at least can tell you why this exception normally occurs.