Welcome to /r/learnprogramming!

I’m currently learning how to build and interact with APIs, and I realized that half the challenge is actually testing them properly.

There are so many tools out there, and it’s a bit overwhelming to know which ones are actually worth learning when you’re starting out. I’d love to get advice from this community.

Here’s what I’ve found so far (please correct me if I’m missing something):

Postman → Probably the most popular. Great GUI, lots of tutorials.

Hoppscotch → A lightweight, open source alternative to Postman. Runs in the browser or self-hosted.

Bruno → Stores collections as plain text, easy to version control (great for teams).

Hurl → CLI-based, tests APIs using simple text files. Super clean for automation.

Yaak → Made by the original Insomnia founder. Sleek UI.

SoapUI → Bit older but strong if you need SOAP and more complex protocols.

Apidog → Similar to Postman, but I noticed it has a neat offline mode and works well for designing + mocking APIs.

Thunder Client (VS Code extension) → Really handy if you don’t want to leave your editor.

For someone still learning programming, what would you recommend focusing on first? Should I start with a GUI tool like Postman/Bruno/Hoppscotch, or dive straight into CLI stuff like Curl/Hurl to build stronger fundamentals?

Would love to hear what worked for you all when you were learning API testing.

Hey everyone 👋,

When I first started learning programming, one of the hardest parts was looking at real code and trying to understand what it actually does in plain English. Pseudocode helped a lot, but writing it line by line was time-consuming. Fast forward to today, when I recently joined my internship, I had to navigate and understand a lot of complex functions in a language that I was unfamiliar with, wishing it could turn into English.

So I built a little side project: PseudoGen — a VS Code extension that instantly converts code into easy to read pseudocode.

Example:

Input:

def isAnagram(s, t):

if len(s) != len(t):

return False

Output:

Check if lengths of s and t are equal

If not, return false

Otherwise, build frequency counts...

The idea is to help beginners and experts see the logic without worrying about syntax.

It’s free on the VS Code Marketplace. I’d love feedback from this community to take this to the next level and make an impact:

• Do you think this would help when learning?
• What features would make it more useful for you?
• Would you opt to run a local LLM so you don't have to use an OpenAI API key?

Thanks, and I hope this helps someone who’s struggling like I did!

Hello, I am Tomy. I am totally beginner in python programming language. For the people like me who struggle when learning a language(in the middle field), we get stuck. I read python books but I barely improved. I can understand code but can't do it properly. What to do when somebody is stuck and not improving for a long time even trying hard???

Like websites which show off projects, what services you might offer, have a blog or such?

Or is it on Github pages or other specialized services?

So I’m almost done with my masters and I’ve basically only used Java. I have also learned C# by myself and made a few CLIs and a server to host my website backend. Currently I’m working towards either getting my Azure AZ-204 certification or continue learning Rust (I am on chapter 7 of the rust book currently). I’m just wondering if fully reading the rust book online would be better before starting the certification or not?

Hi! I have been working as a web developer for two years and when I am looking at the codebases of the projects I am a part of I am unable to understand what is exactly going on. I simply believe that a lot of the code that is written today is unreadable but I am not sure if that's really the case or I am simply not skilled enough.

I used to be a perfectionist and when I was working on my own projects it would take even 30 minutes or more to simply decide on naming a variable. Overthinking kept me away from creating and that's the primary reason for which I've wasted a lot of time. I tried to aim for perfection but such thing doesn't exist. I remember once I had the ocassion to talk with a popular car designer at Renault about sketching cars and getting the perfect drawing and he answered me with "Only God can be perfect.". Later now, I was able to quit this toxic and not productive mindset of "aiming at perfection".

Still, that doesn't mean I don't have a sense for order and beauty (I think?). Yes, nothing can be perfect but there are worse or better ways of doing something. When it comes to code, I am a big fan or consistency. What do I mean by that? Be consistent in naming conventions, in programming paradigms and in the location of the created and used modules. I admire simplicity and I dislike complexity.

For example, one of the most recallable thing is that in the place where I work, when there is an request to update the CSS on a page, we overwrite the element rules. Instead of trying to locate and modify a class on a HTML tag they would write new rules using that tag's ID, would add style directly in HTML or use the !important rule specifier.

When it comes to what is JS, code is split around everywhere, hard to trace or reason about. That's something I noticed studying other online smaller projects. I am studying game development on my own at home and when I am reading the source code of some indies... code is literally a weird combination betweeing polling and event driven. I respect both paradigms but combining them, especailly with no comments or no consistency, turns into a nightmare to track. I prefer those 10000 lines of ifs in GameMaker than this weird combination of callbacks and procedural.

More than anything, I admire code that is consistent and ordered. If a module is chaotic, then that chaos is the module's chaos and trapped in there. If the module has proper wiring between input, outputs and isn't tangled with the main application as a complete monolith, that specific part can be much more easily refactored or replaced in case of need (for later optimization or other stuff).

Also, tutorials. Everytime and then when I want to start learning a new library or framework or whatever, tutorials simply get into unnecessary specifics. For example, I want a 2 minute tutorial to teach me about creating an endpoint. But most tutorials start to delve inside unrelated stuff like ORMs or authentification. Yes, these are important, but right now we were talking about url endpoints, right? That's like learning the piano and out of nowhere "yo, check out these guitar strings" when trying to become a musician.

I hope I didn't write too much BS but to end this post gracefully I will leave here my question (which is also present in the title) : Are some codebases really unredable or am I simply dumb? Is reading codebases a skill in itself? Then how do you become better at it? Has it ever occured to you to find a codebase where your first impression was "that's pure art!" ?
Thanks for reading.

Hi, a few months ago I made a website for a final project. I learned how to make the website by watching a tutorial on how to make a website using Flask. I ended up really enjoying the process and have found an interest in programming. I am really interested in making websites/ understanding how to make media platforms. I also have a strong interest in learning programming for robotics or even understanding how to make a basic ai chatbot. I'm not really sure where to start so, what are some programming languages I can look into or some videos I can watch to start learning??

Hey everybody! I’m a beginner in programming and have been working on some small projects, mostly in C. I’d like to try contributing to an open-source project, but I don’t know where to start. What would you recommend as a first step?

What language should I learn to make a program that could help me make labor calculations.

Like: I insert a financial statement, and the program returns me the complete calculation?

My vision is to help job seekers not just with resumes, but with relevant job postings in one place, almost like Skyscanner for jobs.

To do this, I’m exploring scraping job data from large sites to display curated postings. But as I dig deeper, I realize this is a legal and ethical minefield.

Has anyone here tried navigating this? What practices (if any) make scraping jobs less risky, or should I look at partnerships/APIs instead? Would love honest thoughts from other founders, solo makers, or anyone with firsthand legal/tech experience.

I have skimmed through some github projects which scrape job postings and I really loved this project: https://github.com/speedyapply/JobSpy, I have integrated it and works pretty neat.. Any suggestions are apprecitated.

Hey everyone, I'm currently a few months into my coding journey and I'd like to take the next step into building more advanced websites. I've been working through freecodecamp modules related to javascript and web dev, but applying these concepts to building real live products still seems super overwhelming to me.

Id like to find a more focused resource that will help me with things like integrating payments, analytics, and other practical things into my websites. Are there any youtube channels, platforms, or courses that might help put me on a more focused path?

Hey guys! I am a beginner programmer. I have been learning C++ and Python but I am not sure how to build projects on my own. I see people building cool projects and I want to be able to do that too. I still rely on tutorials that spoon feed me every single step to build something.

How do I overcome this?

So if my understanding is correct, polling with a while loop makes logic easy to trace but at the cost of performance in weaker systems or more complex applications.

Events are more efficient because they don't run the entire chunk of code, just parts of it associated with an event that has been triggered.

I understand that input events are the most important as they are provided by the hardware/OS (a mouse click, a key pressed).

But how is the case for costum events? Like "onLevelCompleted" or "onFormSent" ? The costum events aren't handled using code behind? If so, there is no hidden polling behind the event handler? To check "if onLevelCompleted do that" ?

Also, can't you optimize polling to get closer to event handling in terms of performance / resource usage by placing smart ifs? Like, if you have a game with two levels, you can use if levelOne loaded == true and if levelTwo loaded == false. Doesn't this help by not checking for 2 sets of unrelated ifs at the same time?

Does anyone know who made this? Or what kinda of art exactly this is, or where to look for this sort of art. Any info would be appreciated

( https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSAUrs1eU/ )

Hey everyone,

I’m currently in my final year of Software Engineering and starting to brainstorm ideas for my Final Year Project (FYP). I want to build something practical, impactful, and not too generic.

My main skills/interests include:

• Web development (React, Next.js, Node.js, Firebase)
• Mobile app development (Capacitor, React Native basics)
• APIs & integrations
• Some experience with AI/ML APIs

I’m open to ideas in areas like SaaS products, automation tools, productivity apps, AI-assisted platforms, or anything innovative that can be scaled.

If you’ve done a cool FYP or have any suggestions based on industry trends, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

What are some projects that:

• Are feasible within 3–4 months
• Can have a real-world use case
• Look good on a portfolio or resume

Thanks in advance for your ideas! 🙌

Hey everyone,

I’m currently in my final year of Software Engineering and starting to brainstorm ideas for my Final Year Project (FYP). I want to build something practical, impactful, and not too generic.

My main skills/interests include:

• Web development (React, Next.js, Node.js, Firebase)
• Mobile app development (Capacitor, React Native basics)
• APIs & integrations
• Some experience with AI/ML APIs

I’m open to ideas in areas like SaaS products, automation tools, productivity apps, AI-assisted platforms, or anything innovative that can be scaled.

If you’ve done a cool FYP or have any suggestions based on industry trends, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

What are some projects that:

• Are feasible within 3–4 months
• Can have a real-world use case
• Look good on a portfolio or resume

Thanks in advance for your ideas! 🙌

I'm currently in my last year of my college. I have done many leetcode questions and thought of starting competitive programming to improve my abilities and perform well in Online Assessments. But some have advised me not to start bevause the correct time to start competitive programming in my first year. Is that really the case? Also other than giving contest on leetcode and a lot of practice, how can I get better at problem solving? And when should I revise previously solved questions? Because I am currently focusing more on new problems. Also, for the questions which I couldn't solve by myself, what should I do to make the most out of it to learn from it?

I'm an beginner-intermediate-ish programmer and am considering on buying a course, is it really worth it at this point? If so, can you please give examples of worthwhile courses? (Most of my knowledge is in informatics, looking to learn game development)

Hey all, I'm currently working on a movie reservation system project to add it to my personal projects. I have prior experience in working in backend. So What i need help is to create the frontend for this application. I will be creating the backend on spring boot. We can choose any tech stack for the frontend.Also we both can add this project to our resume. If you are someone , who is interested in working on frontend , and also have some experience in frontend( as i haven't worked on frontend before) and is looking to add some personal projects to the resume, feel free to ping me. We can work together to implement this project . Till then, Happy coding!

Second year CS student here and I'm already starting to feel some discomfort in my wrists after long coding sessions. My dad's a programmer and dealt with carpal tunnel in his 40s, so I'm trying to be proactive about this stuff.

Here's what I've started doing that seems to help:

Taking breaks: Set a timer for every 45 minutes, get up and stretch for 5 minutes. Actually doing this consistently has been harder than I expected but it makes a difference. This is necessary, the rest will pay off in the ling run guys.

Wrist stretches: Found some good ones on YouTube. The prayer stretch and wrist flexor stretches seem to help the most.

Better posture: Raised my monitor so I'm not hunching over. Best way to go about it is a standing desk but I don't have enough to invest in an automatic one (Magnus Pro looks so so good!) yet so I haven't gotten one yet. On the other hand, I am still working on keeping my shoulders relaxed, the anxiety I feel constantly keeps them clenched.

Split keyboard: This was probably the biggest change. Switched to a NocFree Lite about 4 months ago and honestly my wrists feel way more natural now. Takes some getting used to but the angle just feels right. NocFree Lite is just so light and easy to carry around. You'd think that the carrying part was annoying because of the 2 piece product but they provided a carrying bag with the board as well.

Proper mouse positioning: Moved my mouse closer and have been on a lookout for a vertical mouse. I've been checking out the Anker wireless vertical ergonomic mouse as well as the Logitech MX vertical, which one is better? Any other ergonomic mouse that I should check out?

Anyone else dealing with this early in their programming journey? What's worked for you? Really don't want to end up like my dad with surgery and months of PT.

Hi everyone, I've been learning programming for at least a month now and I believe I haven't learned that much. I was experimenting with for loops and when I was typing code with the IDE I was using PyCharm) it sort of predicted that I would type this (I'm referring to the for index in range part):

names = ["Gab", "Aubrey", "Jannet", "Justin"]
for name in names:
    for index in range(len(name)):
        print(name[index], end=" ")
    print()

And it returns this:
G a b

A u b r e y

J a n n e t

J u s t i n

And I have no idea why that works the way it does. Can someone explain this to me?

I'm not sure if I'm the only person this applies to, but it's certainly very weird for me. For context, I am a sophomore, and in my two math classes Honors Algebra 2 and Honors Geometry, the concepts in there are not exactly impossible to understand, but a bit more difficult to grasp. However, when I learn mathematics for programming, it's much easier compared to math inside school. For more context, I am an ML Engineer, and I've learned much harder topics such as matrices, partial derivatives, derivatives, vectors, and overall just a good amount of calculus and linear algebra for programming. Although it's obvious that I'm not going into incredible depth with those topics, and it's only a basic understanding for what I need, I have created an entire AI from scratch before, and I'm creating another one with a shitty Scratch ripoff called MIT App Inventor, and for any AI nerds out there, that is not an easy task. You must be proficient in your understanding of programming & math, so how the hell can I do that but I can't learn what a domain and range is??

I'm not exactly sure why this happens to me, but it certainly is weird. I should also mention that I learn much better when watching YouTube videos on math compared to learning math in school, so maybe it's just the way I learn. I have an Honors Algebra 2 test on domain and range and a bunch of other things tomorrow such as like increasing intervals and stuff like that, so I'm going to try and figure out a way that I can implement those concepts into programming somehow. If anyone wants an update, I'll post it here.

I’m considering getting a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W to run a simple program that controls the USB slot at a specific time. I’ll also hook up an LED strip to use as an alarm.

My plan is to set up Flask so I can manage it from my phone. Eventually, I’d like to add more stuff like a speaker, screen, IR remote or if possible enable Alexa connectivity.

I know this might be a bit much 😂, but any tips or better suggestions would be awesome!

I’ve been trying out a lot of different IDEs and libraries recently, and I keep ending up with leftover folders and registry entries even after uninstalling. It clutters my PC and sometimes causes weird behavior when reinstalling new versions.
I’ve tried manually cleaning things up, but it’s time-consuming. Are there any safe and reliable ways you handle leftover software traces without breaking Windows?
(I came across some utilities like uninstaller.ipcmaster curious if anyone has experience with these for dev machines.)

I’ve noticed that most tutorials and books for Data Structures & Algorithms explain concepts with static diagrams or code snippets. But in practice, many learners (including me) find it hard to follow what’s actually happening step by step.

Imagine a tool that lets you:

• Highlight each line of code as it executes
• Watch arrays, stacks, trees, and graphs update in real time
• Follow a problem from input → every intermediate state → final output

Do you think this approach genuinely helps in learning/interview prep, or is it just a flashy extra?