thompson.xena•2mo agoMost Upvoted

My first program was just a blinking light, but now it's a whole weather app

Six months ago, I could only make a single LED blink on my Arduino in my bedroom. I followed a YouTube tutorial from 'Programming with Mosh' and felt stuck there. Last week, I finished a small Python app that pulls the local forecast for Boston and displays it. The big change was forcing myself to build one tiny new thing each day, even if it was just a single line of code. Has anyone else found a daily practice that finally made things click for them?

3 comments

3 Comments

webb.xena1mo ago

Ha! My daily practice mostly involves staring blankly at my screen for 20 minutes before accidentally fixing the one bug I've been avoiding (true story, happened yesterday with my weather app's date formatting). The small steps thing worked for me too - I started with literally just printing "hello" to the console each morning until I got bored enough to add time and date functions. The breakthrough moment was when I connected three tiny pieces I'd written on different days and suddenly had a working clock display, which felt both amazing and ridiculous since it was just telling me it was 3pm. Still can't do big weekend projects without getting lost in the sauce, but those little daily wins stack up like Legos (or crackers, depending on how hungry I am).

the_lee2mo ago

I mean, that daily grind works for some people, but it never stuck for me. I found I needed bigger weekend projects to really get into the flow and learn how things connect. Maybe it's just me but those small daily steps felt too broken up.

noahw531mo ago

Ngl @the_lee, I get what you're saying about the flow on weekend projects. But those small daily steps are what build the foundation so the weekend work actually makes sense. Tbh, skipping the daily stuff left me just copying code without really knowing why it worked. You need both the little pieces and the big picture to connect everything properly.