I've taught a few developers and have pretty extensive experience on the topic

Tutorials are fine, but don't get stuck on the idea that you need guidance through the whole process, it’s better to avoid tutorials entirely than it is to follow a bunch of tutorials.

For example, when I started out my most recent student we began with some challenges that I knew would provide some context for future projects, then immediately jumped into those projects. Depending on what you're passionate about, the best project for you can differ, but we did the following projects:

1. A lemmy face wizard page, literally just a list of lemmy faces that clicking on will copy to your clipboard
2. An invoice maker, since they needed to send me invoices because I was paying them for their time
3. a react native sudoku app, this one was challenging and took them a couple months, but when they were done they took over one of my contracts for mobile development

And the challenges that led to these projects? Everything from basic algorithms to api interaction puzzles.

My advice would be to pick something that you love and come up with the tiniest project you can possibly think of, then cut the scope a little more.

For example, love pokemon? Maybe make a website that you can click on one of the types and it will highlight the strengths/weaknesses of that type. Love golf? Maybe make a golf score tracker mobile app, a big button to add a stroke and another to move to the next hole.

If you are passionate about something it gets a lot easier to get better at programming because the stuff you're missing will become obvious and you'll need to look it up to finish your project.

My very first project nearly 30 years ago was a windows 95 app that moved your mouse to draw in mspaint automatically.

I'd say starting a new language is a pretty big mistake until about 4-5 months after you feel proficient with your first language. Starting over with new syntax has actually caused more than one of my students to quit

Then next I would examine the redirect and check your stack, is it a 302, 304, etc, is there a service identifying header with the redirect?

After that I would try to completely change your setup for testing purposes, greatly simplify things removing as many variables as possible, maybe setup an api server with a single route on express or something and see if that can be faithfully served

If you can't serve with even a simple setup then you need to go back to the drawing board and try a different option

You set the A record to your internal ip address from within your router?

Nginx configs have a lot of options, you can route differently depending on the source context

So a couple questions:

1. Do you only want to access this from your local network? If so setting up a domain name in the broader internet makes no sense, you're telling the whole world what local ip within your switch/router is your server. Make your own dns or something if you just want an easier way to hit your local resources
2. do you want to access this from the internet, like when you're away from home? Then the ip address you add to your a record should be your isp's public ip address you were assigned, it will not start with 192.168, then you have your modem forward the port to your local system (nginx)

If you don't know what you are doing and have a good firewall setup do not make this service public, you will receive tons and tons of attacks just for making a public a record.

It can be hard to put this into words well because it's different in every situation and making universal statements are rarely correct but I'll do my best

The problem here is twofold, 1. You feel insecure and 2. Your job is at risk

When interacting with people, not just at work, there are some keys to being well liked. You can be direct, but being direct often comes across as an air of superiority, as if you're saying "I'm too good to pretend or do what everyone else is doing". You're saying you are above thinking about how your words will be received, and it's the receiver's job to avoid getting their emotions involved.

In a community, when one person considers themselves better than everyone else via this kind of "better than you" behavior, people will generally consider that person unfriendly or outcast them.

Capitulation and going with the flow of expectations is surprisingly one of the best ways to get ahead, it's counter intuitive but debasing yourself for the ego of others (harsh way to phrase it, but true) can often make them amenable to just about anything you want. We are remarkably complex, yet fundamentally simple creatures, it doesn’t take much to make a person likable.

I see how you could draw that conclusion, but it's definitely far from the default

https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2024/1

Number 7 by github project stats

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology#most-popular-technologies

12 by stack overflow's survey

If an apple a day keeps em away, what happens if you eat 80% of an apple, maybe the real problem is that most of us don't eat the core and stem, doctors have a very refined apple consumption detection organ that can detect even slight deviations!

Reading news websites without ad blockers is genuinely such a gross experience, why is there a video playing? Why can't I close it? More ads than content, feels like sitting in on a culty mlm presentation or something

2k downloads weekly it looks like not dollars

You know what, unfortunately for some in the target demographic the answer is yes. Those who capitulated and got jobs as ice agents got a huge sign on bonus and livable salary. Bribed to terrorize

Don't give up your leverage under threat of loss, bullies will say "put down the baseball bat or I'll beat you up" when the only thing keeping them at bay is the bat

And they were both boyyys

Who's taking bets that the next one will embrace the Mormon moniker again