What was the weirdest thing that tripped up you as an absolute beginner?

Posted by Kadabrium@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 15 comments

For me it was the difference between return and print, especially since in python you could write bare expressions in the terminal and it returns/prints the result

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jameyiguess@reddit

I seem to remember being confused by parameters and arguments being able to have different names.

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Kadabrium@reddit (OP)

True, I didn't register the difference between those terms until i started using claude code and it kept correcting me

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When I started learning like 16 years ago, I could not get how arrays worked. I even asked my coworker at the time something like “what is between each index of the array, like how is it laid out”. He looked at me blankly and was like “…memory addresses?”. It was a dumb question looking back but it genuinely befuddled me

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Jazzlike-Compote4463@reddit

How do you follow the flow of the code through the application without a billion print statements? Bow does x link to you? What is the state a Line 297? Do I have to log every variable at every point I want to know what they are in the app?

The answer to this is - of course - to use a debugger and learn all of its functions, now I'll use the logger once every 6 months or so.

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spinwizard69@reddit

This is really hard to say, first off personal computers didn't exist when i first got interested, in fact i started from the electronics side of things. Literally learning what logic gates are and how TTL worked. The initial hardware of the day, S100 computers were out of budget, and it wasn't until the Vic 20 hit the market that i could afford a “PC”. By the way basically useless for programming without storage.

In any event years latter i learned the hardway that compilers made mistakes. Those early days meant that all software was very buggy.

That said i suspect many trip ups along the way.

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zeekar@reddit

Enumerated types. Numbers, strings, no problem, but what do you mean I can take any list of words and make a new type out of it? There aren't any quotes! Where are the quotes??

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alexplivings@reddit

foreach loops

I didn’t understand them at all because of what they were doing behind the scenes. “What do you mean it just knows how many there are???” “So it reassigns this variable each loop?”

I feel like most beginners find them convenient but I didn’t understand and I hated it lol

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Why the hell do I need to write Robot thrice in a single line?!

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DTux5249@reddit

To be fair, one of them is optional

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Aggressive_Many9449@reddit

Which one?

I started on Java 1.6, where types where not optional.

No var robot = new Robot() for me.

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