Getting Started - where can you get help coding?

Question

My last post was a monster and it peaved some people so I'll keep this one short. Besides self study in books and google, are there good resources to turn to get guidance from actual humans Online? Say i want to write a piece of software as a project and take a crack at it. It would be great if I could turn somewhere for some mentorship to ask "how do i do X" or for some critiquing/evaluation - "did i do this ok?"

Surely there must be something for us out there to really help us hone our skills...? thanks all.

Answer 1

That is exactly what this site is all about. Try working on your project, and use this site as a place to ask questions and get guidance. It really has become a great resource that is quickly becoming better to search than google.

Answer 2

look at this post for a bunch of ideas. not only can you ask for help, but you can help yourself to the archive of posts on any programming topic you wish.

Answer 3

Put your questions here and people will scramble to answer your question. :)

Answer 4

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks are a great resource. There are often channels specific to languages. You won't find prolonged tutorials or people willing to validate your latest project, but you may get some good advice, and many are happy to make a short suggestion. See EFnet, freenode.

Newsgroups/Usenet and mailing lists are similiarly helpful. Conversations can be more involved. Programmers tend to prefer these originals to web forums and web bulletin boards, but all are roughly equivalent. See Usenet on WP, Tera News, gmane.org.

Also useful is knowing how to ask questions the smart way.