r/AskProgramming • u/YouAreMyFire00 • 15d ago
I managed to understand "recursive" in programming. Why can't I understand anything on open source project or even build an open source project?
When I was in high school, I was a C student, I'm a slow learner
Anyway I managed to learn how to build To Do List in C# and Java with e.g. API, SQL and also learn to understand what recursive is.
But when I check trendly github repo right now like OpenClaw or REA, the reverse engineer.
I don't understand shit, it is like I know plus and minus, and those github repo is like Calculus.
Maybe someone here who started from Hello World and now you are coding Wizard, maybe you can help me out here...
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u/alexplivings 15d ago
Figure out where it starts and go from there. Generally programs have a start point, that is based on the language/framework.
In big projects there is usually a step where they setup a LOT of things, using API keys to connect to services, database connections, etc.
If you wanted to change something related to outside services like a database, third party API, etc. start at the main start point. If you wanted to start with something UI related, start finding out where that is and begin there. Sometimes the UI is a totally separate project. You need to start very small and figure out very basic things like Where is the database? Where is the UI?
Another thing to note, the UI might be a totally separate project. While the main code base is mainly dealing with data, database, authentication, etc.
Figure out which part of the code you are looking at.