Hey everyone, I’m an incoming CSE student (Class of 2030) starting my coding journey from absolute scratch. I’ve been seeing a lot of advice saying that beginners get trapped in “tutorial hell” or rely too much on Claude/GPT to write their code, so I decided to set a rule for my first week: Build simple logic projects using only what I’ve studied, with zero help coding or debugging from AI or the internet. Over the last 5 days, I managed to build: A basic calculator A temperature converter A currency converter (I completely forgot to take screenshots of the terminal code before closing it out, lol) Spending 20 minutes staring at a syntax or logic error and finally finding the missing variable or indentation myself felt 10x better than having a tool fix it for me. Looking back at it even a day later, I already see so many ways I could have optimized the structure or made it cleaner. But I guess you have to write bad code to learn how to write good code. My plan is to keep building like this and post updates 1–2 times a week to keep myself accountable, also I’m documenting my raw weekly progress, bugs, and college prep journey over on my LinkedIn Profile if anyone wants to connect or mentor a freshman! submitted by /u/Primary_Towel5993
Originally posted by u/Primary_Towel5993 on r/ClaudeCode