DEV Community: Sanchi

"SyntaxError,IndentationError-The Errors That Almost Broke Me"

Sanchi — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 11:11:38 +0000

Part 3 of an honest journey from zoology to code — the errors nobody warns you about.
_

I said last time that errors were coming. They came.

Red text. Everywhere. SyntaxError. IndentationError. And a dozen others I still can't fully explain, even now. Some days it wasn't even a real problem — it was one word, one letter, one missing colon. That's it. That's all it took to stop me completely.

And the worst part? Sometimes I'd sit with one error for days. Not hours — days. Reading it over and over, changing things at random, hoping something would just work. And when I finally found the fix, it was always something so small it made me want to scream. One letter. One space. One tiny thing I'd been staring past the whole time.

I got frustrated in a way I didn't expect. Frustrated enough to want to throw my laptop across the room. Frustrated enough to cry, more than once. There were days I closed the laptop and didn't touch it again for a while — not hours, days. I told myself I was done. That this wasn't for me. That maybe I should just give up and go do something I already knew how to do.

But I kept coming back.

Not because I suddenly got braver or smarter. I just... came back. After a few days, after the frustration cooled off, I'd open the notebook again and start from wherever I'd left off, still confused, still slow, but there.

And somewhere in that cycle, I learned something I didn't expect to learn: errors don't go away. Not for beginners, not for people who've been doing this for years. Everyone gets stuck. Everyone stares at red text feeling personally attacked. That never fully stops.

So if you're learning to code and you feel like giving up — you're allowed to. Be angry. Cry if you need to. Close the laptop for a few days if that's what it takes. That's not failure, that's just what learning this looks like sometimes.

Just don't stay closed forever.

Because when you finally push through an error that's been sitting on your chest for days, something shifts. You feel a little braver. A little more willing to try the next hard thing. Enough, eventually, to share your work with people even when it feels too basic, too beginner, too naive to show anyone.

And when you do — you'll know it's yours. All of it. Every clumsy, self-taught, hard-won line of it. And there's always more room to get better from here.

Still learning. Still getting stuck. Still showing up anyway.

"def,drop,obs,abs-The Words That Broke Me First"

Sanchi — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:09:46 +0000

_ Part2 of an honest journey from zoology to code-no one told me where
To start._

I started my Kaggle journey with Python. directly. No steps before it, no one behind me pointing the way.

Everyone I know is from commerce, arts, biology, or math. None of them speak this language. So when I opened my first notebook, there was no one to ask, "Is this normal?" No mentor, no course, no one checking my work. Just me, a notebook, and way too many tabs open.

I didn't know what I was looking at. Didn't know where to start, what to click, or what I was even supposed to be doing. The code just sat there and stared back at me, like it was waiting for me to know something I didn't.

I started with Kaggle's Python course, chapter by chapter: functions, loops, lists, conditionals. And here's the strange part — the tutorial part, I'd read it, understand it, nod along like, yes, this makes sense, I've got this.

Then the exercise notebook would open. empty, blinking cursor. And my mind would go completely blank. Like I hadn't read anything at all. Like the last ten minutes never happened.

Looking back, I think it wasn't just one thing. The logic didn't make sense to me, and neither did the words on the screen. Two problems at once, tangled together, so I couldn't even tell which one was actually stopping me.

'def'. What is that? Define what? Define how? I remember reading it three or four times and still not moving forward. I opened a new tab, googled it, read three different explanations, and still felt stupid. It was late, I was tired, and one word had stopped me completely.

'feature'. I kept seeing it everywhere, like it was obvious, like everyone just knew. Turns out it's just a column. Something I was supposed to look at, question, maybe fix. I felt silly once I figured that out.

'drop'. Drop what, drop where? Eventually I understood — drop a feature from the table, out of the notebook. Such a small word, carrying so much decision behind it.

And then came the short forms. 'obs'. 'abs'. I stared at both like they were in another language — turns out they were just observations and absolute values, hiding behind two lazy letters. Somehow, the shortcuts confused me more than the actual words did.

None of this was hard because it was smart. It was hard because it was foreign. In zoology, I never had to ask what a word meant twice. I knew a language there. Here, I was relearning how to read before I could even try to think.

I'm not writing this because I've figured it out. I'm writing this because I haven't, and some days that's the only honest thing I have to say.

Still confused most days. But a little less lost than I was last week.

And just when I thought I was starting to get somewhere — the errors started. Red text everywhere, messages I couldn't read, code breaking for reasons I still don't fully understand. That's a whole story on its own.

So if you've ever stared at an error message and felt personally attacked by your own laptop, stick around. That one's coming next.

I Don't Know How to Code. I'm Learning Anyway.

Sanchi — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:14:20 +0000

A_Zoology postgraduate's honest journey into the world of coding.

**I have a BSc in Life Science and an MSc in Zoology. I know cells.i know organisms.i know how to sit with a research problem and think it through carefully.

But code?not long ago, i couldn't even read a line of it-i didn't know what i was looking at, how it was meant to be read,or how it was meant to be written.

So why did i start?

Honestly-fear. i kept watching the world move faster,technology becoming the language of everything,and i felt something uncomfortable sitting in my chest. a quiet fear. what if i get left behind? not dramatically,not all at once-just slowly,quietly,becoming irrelevant in a world that was speaking a language i never learned.

That fear was the first reason.

The second was something harder to admit—I want to build my name in this field.i want a career here. I don't even fully know what that looks like yet. but the want is there.loud and clear,even when everything else is confusing.

And the third reason-the one that actually gets me through the hard days-is curiosity.a real pull towards this whole world of coding.i don't fully understand it yet, but something about it draws me in.

In the beginning,a missing comma or a stray hyphen made no sense to me. i didn't understand why they mattered,or how something so small could break everything.i'd stare at an error with no idea what i'd done wrong.

Now, slowly,i've started noticing those small mistakes myself-usually after i run the code and it breaks.it's a tiny thing.but it's mine.

So here i am.still at the beginning.learning on kaggle. making mistakes i'll probably write about here.

This blog is not a tutorial. i have nothing to teach you yet.

This is just a story told honestly, from inside the confusion.

I hope you'll read along.

_**