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Comment by mikub | Hacker News Reader

Thank you, I really liked that post. I'am 40years now and started to teach myself programming 4 years ago. I do a lot of overthinking, like "Linux or Windows", "Should I learn some C before Python? What about all this networking stuff, how does that work?". I know it probably doesn't really matter, because I consider myself still a beginner in programming, but it is sometimes really hard not to feel overwhelmed by all of this stuff, and just stop thinking about what, or what not to use.

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I have been doing this for about 28 years now. It is always overwhelming. There is always one bigger tech rabbit hole to run down. My advice, start with 1 small thing you can do. Do not worry if it is right or wrong. Just pick something you can do. Then go from there. Just today I wrote some code I had been putting off because I was overthinking it. I had the code written up in about an hour. I was way overthinking it. I figured just splat something up and go from there. I found I had already worked most of it out.

It is one thing I got out of agile work. Sometimes people just do not know what they want. But they will know what they do not want. That can be a starting place for you to help figure out what they do want. Also many times something is way better than nothing.

Also if you are struggling with python vs C. Start with python. It is easy to splat something up and get something running and see results quickly. C used to be that thing. But it has a bit of a learning curve of 'how to compile a program' first, then learn to program with it. A good skill to have but when starting I would put it lower on the 'things to learn' scale.

That little program I did earlier I could have done in java/C/C++/C#/js/bash/powershell/winbatch/SQL/etc/etc/etc but I picked python as it got me to splat something and get it done. It aint pretty but it gets me the info I was after. 100% throwaway code. My only real nitpick with python is that its ruthless dogmatic approach to spacing. Some consider that a good thing. But at first when you are learning it can be a drawback as you do not understand grouping and scope yet.

That sounds more like choice stress than overthinking. I'd say the latter is rather where you consider something from a million angles (overly many; overthinking) whereas the former is just having many questions to make a decision on because you don't yet have an established language to work with and are simply new to this and so it's overwhelming.

It certainly does matter, but it might not be the angle you want to approach the problem from. If you set a goal and/or find a mentor, the choices suddenly become easier, and the chance to get yourself lost in ideology -- slimmer.

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