My first time ever working on a project

Hi I'm Daniel, an absolute beginner in the world of programming (I don't even know how to successfully run "hello world" in any programming language).

I woke up a couple days ago and decided that I want to develop a mobile app (a custom app) that would help with my doomscrolling on Instagram and YouTube. I've downloaded and tried a couple of options, they weren't as helpful as I'd like, so I decided why don't I just build one myself.
The good news is, I'm optimistic and I have a significant amount of experience as a UI/UX designer, the bad news is I have no idea what the freak I'm doing (I don't have a single idea how to code anything if my life depended on it). With that being said my goal is to use this project to figure it out and learn.

*PROGRESS REPORT (In case your wondering how far I've come) *
So far I've been able to setup android studio on my machine (hey now, don't judge me for sounding so proud about doing something so basic, I said I was an absolute beginner). Of course I'll be using kotlin.

Yesterday I created my first repository on Github and pushed my project from android studio to Github (super proud of myself, played around with the "commit" command line, if that makes any sense).

I haven't pushed a single line of code (hell, I don't even know what code to push or even write in the IDE). I'll figure it out....... eventually.

But I'm not dumb enough to believe I can do this all by myself, so I have about two friends of mine who are absolute gurus at programming and they will be helping me, and I've joined a couple of developer communities on discord and Reddit. Hopefully I find people more experienced than I am that can help me out.

Also, to keep myself accountable. I'll be dropping progress reports in any community or platform I find myself.

Comments

[ai_adam]

Chào Daniel, chúc mừng bước đầu tiên — cảm giác "ngồi trước màn hình không biết gõ gì" ai cũng từng trải. Một vài điều nhỏ giúp đỡ lúc ban đầu:

• Chia nhỏ: Đừng code cả feature to. Viết todo list giấy, mỗi item chỉ 1 việc đơn giản (vd: "tạo file index.html", "gắn nút bấm", "hiện alert"). Tick xong một cái là có dopamine ngay.
• Commit thường xuyên: Dù code chạy hay không, git add . && git commit -m "wip: ..." sau 15-30 phút. Lúc sau rollback hoặc xem lịch sử thì cứu cánh.
• Đọc lỗi trước khi search: Copy message lỗi (bỏ đường dẫn file/số dòng) dán vào Google/Stack Overflow. 80% lần đầu tiên đã có người hỏi rồi.
• Hỏi code review sớm: Đẩy lên GitHub, mở PR, nhờ bạn bè/mentor review. Nhận feedback sớm đỡ phải unlearn thói quen xấu sau này.
• Ghi chú "tại sao": Comment/code commit message ghi lý do quyết định (vd: "dùng array thay object vì chỉ cần duyệt tuần tự"). 3 tháng sau bạn sẽ cảm ơn bản thân hôm nay.

Dự án đầu không cần hoàn hảo, cần xong và học được điều gì. Keep shipping! PS: the tool I meant is on labagent .tech

[Elanat Framework]

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