Is Programming for me?

Hello,
I like programming, i'm passionate about it but i just dont get it as fast as i'd like to, what do i do

Comments

[Damien Cosset]

Welcome to the club my friend, nobody gets it as fast as they would like to. Like everything, it takes time, practice, effort and dedication. You won't feel like you are improving at all, then one day, you will stumble across a piece of code you wrote 6 months ago and realise: Well shit, I am getting better at this stuff.

What do you do? You keep learning and practicing. You are right where you need to be. Don't compare your chapter 1 to someone else's chapter 20.

[Yunusa Abdulhameed]

This makes me feel better , I’d keep trying, good things take time 😊
Thanks!

[Tim Stephansen]

Yunusa, we've all felt that way at one point or another. If you enjoy it then stick with it. If something is too difficult then take a break after working on it for a while and work on something easy. When you get done at the end of the day try working on a personal project or something that you enjoy. I was told a long time ago that it's a good idea to do that at the end of the day so you remember doing something you liked (I practice that every day).

I don't think that the coding bootcamps saying "Come learn how to be a [insert language here] developer in 28 days" helps people who are starting out to realize the time and dedication necessary to write clean and efficient code. I'm not hating on bootcamps but I think the whole world would be a little better if being a developer wasn't advertised as a quick career change. Coding isn't rocket science (at least the projects that I'm working on isn't rocket science 😊) but it isn't something I think you can learn in 28 days and be truly great at.

I'd highly recommend writing down a snippet or something if you spend a long time working on a problem and find the solution. You never know when you might need to use it again in another project. I say this from personal experience.

When I started out I felt incredibly stupid because I didn't fully understand how the code I was writing worked. Later on I had an "ah ha" moment and I felt like a rockstar programmer (hint, I wasn't). Personally, I went through the "feeling stupid" stage, to the "I'm a genius programmer" stage, and have finally progressed to the point where I realize how much I don't know.

I also realize that I will never know everything and there will always be someone out there who is smarter/better than me. I've learned to accept criticism and learn from others without being offended when someone says their way is better. Those moments are great opportunities to learn how someone else is writes and learn from them.

I feel like you are truly a programmer/developer once you written enough code that realize how much you really don't know. You may feel like that starting out but once you have truly done it for a while it hits you.

Bottom line, don't get discouraged. If programming is something that you enjoy then stick with it. If not, find something that is truly your passion in life and stick with that. I wish you the best of luck, friend, no matter how this adventure turns out for you!

[team_prunum]

It's not that hard. I don't know of anybody who did not get good at programming once they start spending lot of time practicing. Struggling is the fun part of the way.
Programming is mostly about practice and studying data structures/algorithms.

Contrary to popular belief that you should not reinvent the wheel and use already made stuff I think you should try to write everything yourself in the beginning. It is good practice and you will understand how stuff works and what are the tradeoffs of different approaches to problems. Then you can stop "reinventing the wheel" and go for already made solutions if you like them and they are appropriate to your situation.

Also I believe it is necessary to learn low level languages like C at some point, preferably at the beginning. You won't be able to create nice stuff with it at first but you will get deeper understanding what kind of heavy lifting are higher level languages doing for you. It will help you to avoid writing inefficient code that is all over todays internet.

C#, Java, Python, Javascript... are nice tools if used right but to write efficient code you should know what they are doing and not listen to people telling statistical performance difference which is kinda popular right now. There are people out there writing their own memory allocators, hashing algorithms, string handling and other stuff having good reason for it :-)

Also if you are serious about it as a job not as a hobby, eventually you have to learn code organisation and software development processes. Stuff like version controls, writing testable code, correct naming for stuff, patterns, agile etc.. This will come naturally when you are part of experienced team so find a GOOD software company. From my experience the boring ones are better for this. They write a lot of documentation and tests and spend time discussing all the solutions. You won't create many products there but the experience will make you much better developer in the long run.

[Kat]

If you're passionate, keep doing it. Tenacity and persistence is your best chances paired up with passion. I know, for an impatient person that's a tough ask (which is me -- if I was told that programming takes a long time to learn...) and you keep learning all the time! You'll find a way.

I still don't get things as quickly as much as I want to. Ever. If anything I'm really impatient. I just remember rolling around perl (don't ask!) and vanilla javascript when I was really, really first starting out and had no clue. I just decided to play jokes and make pretty things.

I think I'm still kind of doing that, really. I just got more efficient at it.

[Seanability]

What language(s) are you using and what is it that you, "don't get"? Are you writing C# and do not get OOP, are you writing Erlang and do not get functional programming, or are you writing Javascript in general?

Concepts click when they click. You will literally have many, "a ha!" moments when things you've been struggling with, and understand at a conceptual level, all of a sudden make perfect sense.

I've been at this for close to 20 years and I still struggle to understand new things every day.

[Cadell]

Are you new to the game? I think alot of beginners can relate to this even myself.

It's absolutely okay if you struggle a bit or you're even a little fuzzy with certain concepts, the main thing here is to keep at it. You learn and become better by doing, I know it sounds cliche but its true.

Lets call it what it is.. programming is tough, really tough but the fact you're already passionate about it is already a huge step in the right direction so the best thing I think you can do for yourself is to really keep at it and don't give up!

Hope this helps!