r/AskProgrammers

thank you for the suggestions everyone, I'm leaving the thread open in case someone wants a list of ideas. you can also add your Christmas wish list here in case your spouses find your account ;)

Hello everyone,

I'm writing this post in relation to AI and programming. I often see people post on Reddit and Instagram saying there is no reason to program anything at all anymore, or they say something similar to "just use claude to make the solution."

To me, this just doesn't make sense. How can you create something without having a deep understanding of the underlying architecture or the logic behind it. The logic is so important especially for me (I do R&D and Tech Innovation). If it's not correct, everything fails. How can they just let Claude or an LLM do this without supervision? I've used it before, and it works great for boilerplate code, but as logic advances, the solution gets unnecessarily large.

I've been looking at statistics regarding this vs what social media/ LinkedIn is saying, and now software fails more often, security risks are more abundant than ever, and we're just churning out bad solutions that we hope works. Sometimes, the cost of tokens is as expensive as just hiring an engineer. Reviewing the code sometimes takes longer than making it myself, or the logic is just odd. Does our expertise in Golang, or programming, matter anymore? Is there still a need to learn the newest additions to Golang or anything else?

You could say I'm just a bit worried, but I don't know where things are going.

I’m sorry for the repetitive “Should I learn to code” post. It’s just that most people asking have the intention of finding a job once they learn, but I just think it’s neat and want a new hobby. Is that silly of me? To spend so much time learning a skill like this just for fun?

Hello I'd like to ask what is the best way to learn and eventually program nowadays. I've been coding for a year in python and I know some basic stuff such as loops, functions, oop and request library, however, I don't know whether learning to code is still a valid skill in 2026. Because recently I have talked to a software engineer and he told me that he hadn't written a line of code for the past 10 months. So I started questioning myself whether is it still worth learning to code. Whether I should focus more on the ai part: meaning which ai tool does what etc. or still focus on tutorials and learning syntax.

I would really appreciate if you would answer and maybe give me some advice.
For now Thanks :)

So here's the thing right, I have absolutely no idea how coding works, I didn't have any coding classes in my high school and the only tech literacy I have is building my own computer and using Linux as a daily driver.

So ultimately I wanna make games, mods, that sorta thing. The thing is is that I have no idea where to start. Should I learn basic fundamentals of how coding and scripting work? Should I learn a language and work from there? Should I give up because some little shit with Claude can redo the exact thing I'm trying to do and steal all the credit? I just don't know where to start is all.

This is probably the wrong subreddit but I thought I'd just ask. Thank you for your time.

I must be experiencing some sort of developer version of writer's block. I can't seem to improve and learn without a project but every project I think of has already been done. Why reinvent the wheel?

There's no novelty in reinventing the 1000th to-do list. And it's rather painful to go over AI generated code.

I used to love coding and making things, but now the only time I ever code is when I have a task given to me by a professor, boss, etc.

It's like I have no creativity anymore.

I don't know what to do.

Hey, I am a teenager who's interested in programming, I started with cs50x but I now enjoy game dev and competitive programming though i love programming in general of any type. Are there any like teens like me who also have the same situation or can the experienced adults please guide me forward...I do not have much peers or similar people around me. And my school is quite old-fashioned (it literally had a topic on how to download an app IN GRADE 9)!!

I’ve recently started learning programming, but I’m finding it difficult to stay consistent and motivated.

For those who learned programming from scratch, what helped you keep going when you felt stuck or overwhelmed?

I’d especially appreciate practical tips, resources, or habits that actually worked for you.

I started a full stack course and learned a lot about frontend and backend. Along the way I got interested in automating things and came up with my own project idea. The irony is that I've used Claude the whole time.

Still, I understand the concepts. On the frontend (React, Tailwind, Framer Motion), I follow the flow of axios client service files hooks/components. on the backend, I use an MVC-style structure with routes, middleware, and controllers (Mongoose models). I've worked with cloudinary for images and MongoDB Atlas for user data, and I've learned how to build REST APIs, connect them to a database, and handle requests.

The honest part: I can't write more than 50% of this code from scratch. But I can read it, understand it, and explain how it works. I've also debugged real problems myself, like MongoDB Atlas IP whitelist issues, controller export mismatches, and stuck processes. I built the mobile navbar hamburger menu step by step on my own.

What I built is a full café ordering app where customers can order drinks and meals online. It has:

Khalti online payment (tested end-to-end in sandbox) and cash on delivery

JWT authentication with httpOnly cookies, plus edge middleware to protect route

An admin panel with full product CRUD, restricted so regular users can't reach it

Cart with global state (Context API), plus a "Buy Now" path that skips the cart

Dynamic product detail pages

Order history for users, and an order view for admins

Responsive design with Tailwind, and Framer Motion animations on the hero

Is this enough to land an internship or a job? Or should I focus on writing more code without AI help first? I'd appreciate honest advice, especially from anyone who started out the same way.

I am a resident surgeon. I taught myself programming. I understand the basics and have built some personal and freelancing projects in the past. I always hoped to make something good, uniting medicine and computer science.

With AI, I don't think my programming skills are much use. The future ahead in my own field doesn't seem very promising too. I used to enjoy building stuff with coding.

I still feel some kind of passion to work on something new, a new idea or an avenue less explored. I quite cannot put it into words. I use AI to code too and save time but I don't enjoy it as much.

I want to know if anyone else is a doctor from a third world country and likes computers and coding?

Anyone in general can guide me what should I invest my time and energy in?

I need some advice because I'm feeling really overwhelmed.

I've been working as an intern at a company for almost 3 months with a stipend of ₹7,200/month. I was initially hired as an Android app developer, but after the first month they shifted me to a C#/.NET developer role. I had absolutely no prior experience with C# or .NET.

It's been about 1.5 months since the switch, and I've learned the basics of C# and .NET and built a few projects. Some of the tasks they give me are easy, but others are quite advanced. A lot of the time I struggle to understand the existing codebase.

I use AI to help me understand the code, and sometimes it explains things well enough that I can explain the overall idea to my manager. But my manager doesn't stop at the high-level explanation. He goes through the code line by line and asks how each statement works, why it's written that way, what each keyword does, and what happens internally. That's where I get stuck.

Even when ChatGPT explains the code, I sometimes still don't fully understand it. I try debugging, but I often get more confused, and AI explanations don't always help.

So I have a few questions:

• Is this normal for someone who's only been learning C#/.NET for about 1.5 months?
• How do you actually learn to understand a codebase instead of just reading AI explanations?
• How do you handle situations where your manager asks questions you don't know the answer to?
• Is it more important to be able to write code, or to deeply understand every line of code you're working with?
• What helped you improve when you were a beginner?

I'm genuinely trying to learn, so please don't roast me. I know I'm still inexperienced, and I really want to get better. Any advice would be appreciated.

I'm exploring a general interoperability problem.

Imagine a person has 20 different memberships:

Brand A → membership ID 12345

Brand B → membership ID 67890

Brand C → phone number

Brand D → email

I'd like to know whether there is a way to create one universal digital credential containing all of these existing identities with an important constraint:

The participating brands do not change their existing software, databases, loyalty systems, checkout systems, or customer-identification processes.

When the customer presents the universal credential at Brand A, the existing infrastructure should somehow receive Brand A's existing identifier.

At Brand B, the same credential should somehow provide Brand B's identifier.

The universal credential itself could contain multiple identities, but the receiving system should ultimately get exactly what it already expects.

Hey guys, I've been working on an app and one of It's features is to detect piano chords and notes through the mic. I tried a couple of things, but they all resulted in some drawback that could affect performance. The two things I am aiming for is speed and accuracy. Here's what I tried and why It's didn't feel satisfied with it.

I won't mention the app to respect the No Marketing rule, but will provide context if I felt it was necessary.

1. Spotify's Basic Pitch Open Source detector: While the accuracy was very high, it took around half a second to detect notes.

Here's some context for the next thing I tried. My app is basically a sheet music practice app, in which notes are displayed from an uploaded score or the score repository. Target notes must be played to move on to the next notes.

2. Probabilities + FFT and YIN:

Basically, I set the chances for the right notes to be played to a high degree, and matched it with FFT inputs if multiple notes were played, and YIN if a single note was played (For accuracy). However, while the speed was heavily increased, the accuracy diminished, however, it was still pretty accurate. Most commonly, if an expected note is played, the detector sometimes recognizes the correct note being played, as well as the note an octave under it.

I want some advice about what I could try next to build this detector. I'm aiming for a lag of under 200ms.

I am okay with starting from scratch, or trying a new method.