I watched my classmates give up on coding because of errors they didn't understand. So I built something.

nabihba — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 10:56:15 +0000

I'm 17 years old and still in school.

Last semester we had a group project that required everyone
to set up a development environment. Most of my classmates
had never touched a terminal before.

What happened next was predictable in plainsight, errors
everywhere. PATH not found. Module not installed. Python
not recognized. Errors that would take an experienced
developer 10 seconds to fix, but to a complete beginner
look like the computer is broken beyond repair.

Our teacher had to stay after class every single day just
to help people get unstuck. The class time wasn't enough.
People were giving up before they even wrote a single line
of actual code.

That stuck with me.

The problem isn't that the errors are hard to fix. Most
setup errors have a one-command solution. The problem is
that beginners don't know what the error is telling them,
don't know what to Google, and don't know if they're about
to make things worse by trying something random.

So I built DevDoctor.

You drop a screenshot of your broken terminal or just
describe what happened in plain English, and it tells you:

What actually went wrong, in plain English
How to open your terminal (with OS-specific steps)
The exact command to copy and run
What you should see when it works

No Stack Overflow rabbit holes. No Googling error codes.
No asking your teacher to stay after class.

I built the whole thing in a weekend using HTML, CSS,
JavaScript, and the Gemini API on the backend. It detects
your operating system from the screenshot automatically.
So if you're on Windows it gives you PowerShell commands,
if you're on Mac it gives you Terminal commands.

The hardest part honestly wasn't the code. It was figuring
out exactly what problem to solve and for who. I went
through about 10 different ideas before landing on this one.

It's completely free and open source.

Try it here: devdoctor-henna.vercel.app
GitHub: github.com/nabihba/devdoctor

I'd love brutal honest feedback, what's broken, what's
confusing, what would actually make this useful for
beginners you know.

And if you're a teacher or work with beginners. I'd
especially love to hear if something like this would
have helped your students.

DEV Community: nabihba

I watched my classmates give up on coding because of errors they didn't understand. So I built something.