Why Vibe Coding is Making You Worse
AI Can Write Code… But It Can’t Think Like You Recently at my work, I was coding a GUI in C#. And I thought this was a good time to start using ChatGPT to help me write my code because it got me about 70% of the way there. But what I noticed was it…
Why You’re Stuck in Coding Tutorials (and how to get unstuck)
I recently got an email from a subscriber who just graduated with an engineering degree. He can code in MATLAB, Python, and R, and he can ace any coding class. But he shared something interesting that I hear from developers every day. He said that every time he starts a new software project, he feels…
What 13 Years of Engineering Taught Me (That My Degree Didn’t)
When I first started writing software, I thought the goal was just to get the code to work. If it compiled and if it passed all my tests, then I was done. But as I got more experienced in the professional world and as I started working with different code bases, I started to realize…
Grep 101: Search Your Code Like a Senior Dev
How to Search Your Entire Codebase with Grep Say you’re having an issue with your program and it’s having a connection issue. Usually, like we would in a browser or in any other file, we can just do Ctrl+F in our file of choice and type in something like connection. That lets us see where…
Why Your Code Looks Amateur (Even When It Works)
Have you ever finished a coding project where the features worked exactly as intended, but you still weren’t proud of the result? You look at the code and feel that something about it looks “amateurish,” even if you can’t quite put your finger on what would make it professional. When I graduated from university, I…
How Senior Devs Organize Their C Projects
From Amateur to Pro: 3 Layers of Separation for Your Codebase Does your project directory look like a flat pile of files? You know the look: logic, headers, tests, and binaries all fighting for space in one folder. In a university project, this is fine. But in a professional environment, this is called Source Pollution.…
4 Criteria for an Awesome Coding Project
If you ask the internet, “How do I learn to code?” you usually get the same advice. Just build something. So you build a calculator. Or a weather app. Or a to do list. But after you finish, you feel like this person who says, “I can’t understand and can’t do anything on my own.”…
Huffman Coding Explained: Build a File Compression Program in C
If you want a project that truly improves your programming skills, building a Huffman compression program in C is one of the best challenges you can take on. Huffman coding is a data compression algorithm that reduces file size by assigning shorter bit sequences to frequently used characters and longer sequences to rare characters. The…
What 13 Years of Engineering Taught Me (That My Degree Didn’t)
When I first started writing software, I thought the goal was just to get the code to work. If it compiled and if it passed all my tests, then I was done. But as I got more experienced in the professional world and as I started working with different code bases, I started to realize…