I'll try to make this short:D
I'm a CS student atm. at 3 sem.

And I just wanted to ask you guys, how did you improve back when you started developing?

The assignments we get at school never really challenge me, so I've spent a lot of time doing "programming ideas"(from sub reddits and ideabag2) on the side.
But I feel like I've hit a brick wall, as in, I don't think I learn super much from them anymore.
Which is why I've tried to "help" others, but when I go onto stack overflow or try to help on open source projects, I understand nothing and I'm definitely not able to help with anything. (They're all about things/subjects I've never heard of before)

So my question is mostly, how did you guys get from where I am today, to where you are today?

Thanks for even reading this.

(I know java, android dev, and Js/node.js)
(Sry about the English ;D)