[zsz]

This person does not "love" programming, and statements like "Our uni doesn’t have any for actual coding courses" (in response to needing to solve more actual problems) or "I have purchased the clean code book that I am reading" (unless you're a genius, and let's just say that most of us are not, you will not succeed by merely passively absorbing the material; you only think you understand the concepts, but until you actively apply what you've learned to solve problems, you are only deceiving yourself in proportion to your conviction that you actually understand and can apply the underlying theory) make this abundantly clear.

If this person really wishes to improve, then the first step they must take is to correctly characterize the problem. How can they "love" doing something, when a) they're clearly not doing the most obvious thing they need to be doing, b) when told what to do, blame their reluctance to do the work on an external factor ("uni doesn't ... and as I result, I am not doing what I need to be to be able to apply concepts that I learned, which is to actively apply them toward solving problems").