I'm Jake Cahill. Lifetime Pythonista, web scraping and automation expert. Enjoy books. Love my wife, dog, and cat, and think AI and Julia are pretty nifty
Location
Maine, USA
Education
A Master's patient mentorship and insatiable curiosity
I can understand how you would feel that way. It is extremely overwhelming. But perhaps it doesn't have to be.
Let's look at it another way: "I want to learn programming". Is like saying "I want to learn to build houses". If you just showed up on an empty plot of land, with all the tools and materials you needed to do the job, but not the experience, you'd probably walk away going "Screw this!".
Now, let's narrow the focus a little bit. What if instead of "I want to learn to build houses" we said, "I want to learn to build Dog Houses". Still too much? How about "I want to learn to build birdhouses". Still too much? "I want to learn how to properly hold a hammer."
The point is, "programming" is an industry. Just like "Construction" is an industry. But I have never even heard of a person who is a master carpenter, electrician, plumber, A/V tech, HVAC tech, locksmith, mason, foundation expert, etc. Conversely, there are many extremely successful tradespeople that do just one thing. Things like roofing and nothing else. Or installing generators and nothing else. Or painting and nothing else.
Now, with the scope narrowed like that, we can see that it might not be so bad. Lots of people talk about needing to "see the big picture" in programming. But that should never be a requirement for somebody just starting out. Seeing the big picture means that you'll know what to do with it and that only comes from understanding the pieces in play. Be kind to yourself and think small. "I want to learn HTML" will inevitably lead to "okay, this is cool. But how do I give it some flair and style?", which will lead to CSS. From there, you will say "that's great! But now I want my code to do some fun stuff depending on how I interact with it", which will lead to Javascript.
Interested in the back end (basically the part of programming that you can't "see")? "I want to write code that solves math problems for me" which would lead to Python (just an example, calm down Rust/Go/Node folks :P). From there, "How do I store the solutions to these math problems? It's a pain to copy/paste them into GSheets" which will lead to SQLite and SQLAlchemy, and so on.
So yes, there is a lot to learn. But you are so capable! The main thing that scares us all off is assuming we "need to know it all". We don't. And honestly, we shouldn't. Pick something small, the smallest task you can think of, and learn to do that. Too hard? Identify the part that trips you up the most and learn that more completely. You'd be surprised where the road leads you! But you can do it!
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I can understand how you would feel that way. It is extremely overwhelming. But perhaps it doesn't have to be.
Let's look at it another way: "I want to learn programming". Is like saying "I want to learn to build houses". If you just showed up on an empty plot of land, with all the tools and materials you needed to do the job, but not the experience, you'd probably walk away going "Screw this!".
Now, let's narrow the focus a little bit. What if instead of "I want to learn to build houses" we said, "I want to learn to build Dog Houses". Still too much? How about "I want to learn to build birdhouses". Still too much? "I want to learn how to properly hold a hammer."
The point is, "programming" is an industry. Just like "Construction" is an industry. But I have never even heard of a person who is a master carpenter, electrician, plumber, A/V tech, HVAC tech, locksmith, mason, foundation expert, etc. Conversely, there are many extremely successful tradespeople that do just one thing. Things like roofing and nothing else. Or installing generators and nothing else. Or painting and nothing else.
Now, with the scope narrowed like that, we can see that it might not be so bad. Lots of people talk about needing to "see the big picture" in programming. But that should never be a requirement for somebody just starting out. Seeing the big picture means that you'll know what to do with it and that only comes from understanding the pieces in play. Be kind to yourself and think small. "I want to learn HTML" will inevitably lead to "okay, this is cool. But how do I give it some flair and style?", which will lead to CSS. From there, you will say "that's great! But now I want my code to do some fun stuff depending on how I interact with it", which will lead to Javascript.
Interested in the back end (basically the part of programming that you can't "see")? "I want to write code that solves math problems for me" which would lead to Python (just an example, calm down Rust/Go/Node folks :P). From there, "How do I store the solutions to these math problems? It's a pain to copy/paste them into GSheets" which will lead to SQLite and SQLAlchemy, and so on.
So yes, there is a lot to learn. But you are so capable! The main thing that scares us all off is assuming we "need to know it all". We don't. And honestly, we shouldn't. Pick something small, the smallest task you can think of, and learn to do that. Too hard? Identify the part that trips you up the most and learn that more completely. You'd be surprised where the road leads you! But you can do it!