When I was learning c++ in high school, I made a working 10x10 implementation of Conway’s Life before I had learned about arrays.

Even then I didn’t do it like this. Just had 200 variables for the front and back buffers, and one big function with individual checks for each grid coord variable to check it’s neighbors.

Or maybe just sloppy vampires?

This advise is specific to op to get them started. But the optimum is a hybrid between mass apps and targeted. You should be spending 5 minutes per app for most, just changing a few words in the cover letter that no one is going to read beyond validating that it’s not terrible.

For the occasional special job you’re more excited about, you can spend up to 30 minutes but not any more, unless you have a connection that can give you specific advice.

It’s primarily a numbers game. You don’t want to feed despair by getting overly in to a particular job posting, but you can’t overtly look like you are shotgunning either.

You can avoid the latter with changing the name of the role and mentioning one thing you’re excited about that the company does, in your cover letter template, and having a resume that is generically strong for the roles applied for.

That can be done in 5 minutes.

Keep programming every day, get your green squares, and apply for 3 jobs every day, spending 5 minutes on two of the apps and 15 on the third. Things are tough right now, but if you do that you will get through.

And as others said, talk to people. You are not alone, and the people who still post on social media are posting about how lucky they are, not how good.

deleted by creator

I spent like 2 hours alone chilling on a bookshelf and enjoying the music while I did something else.

So we’ll get another old game where everything looks oddly shiny instead of oddly dull?