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Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

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21–30 of 173 posts

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#21
This sounds like depression to me. You're having trouble finding activities that interest you and feeling pessimistic about the future. It's easy to get stuck thinking that everything is hopeless or you're going to feel like this forever.

Try taking some time off to decompress and talking to a psychologist. It's a slow process and it can be very challenging but with time you can start getting excited about new challenges again.

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#23
You are smart enough to be a programmer, you just have misconceptions about what programmers are supposed to be.

All that really matters is if you can build things that work.

People who can do the above will get paid, can even be CTOs.

So what if Google wouldn't want you as a programmer, that's for a particular type of person.

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#24
post #11
post #4

I may be off base here, but it sounds to me like you just aren't interested in the subjects. One of the biggest factors to learning is how much interest you have. There are tricks you can do to get yourself more interested, but it does take a fair amount of work and isn't always effective. But if you wonder why sometimes we can remember silly details or whole complicated plotlines from stories but can't remember a si…

Yeah, I guess the real question here is "do you love programming?" If you do you can make it work, it's a matter of not giving up and instead tweaking your learning system, practicing more and better, etc. If you don't you need to find another area. Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me…

> Programming is a very demanding trade, and I don't think you can do it just for the paycheck, you need to have some degree of passion for it. If someone disagrees with me about this I'd love to hear different takes.

Consider that many people out there are doing repetitive and demanding physical labor "just for the paycheck". I'm sure those people would love to trade with someone who is sitting at the desk for 8 hours and earning 4-5x the amount, even if they had to do nothing but pressing the same button the whole time.

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#25
I often worry about this myself, and I highly agree with what some others are saying: find a problem/task that interests you or is worth solving - and work on it until it's solved, regardless of how difficult it is or inadequate it may make you feel by not understanding it at first. If you can't find a challenge, then maybe try going out of your way to add new feature /functionality to your CRUD apps. The challenges are always there if you keep an eye out.

Again,I really believe its more about preserveerance and interest, not inherent intelligence. If you can build and maintain CRUD apps without an issue, then with time and effort I am certain you could progress to other more interesting challenges given enough effort.

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#28
Figure out what makes you happy while you do the bare minimum and use your nights and free time to make it happen, It's hard to sludge you anything you don't like, and it's hard to tell someone "I hate my well paying career", without sounding ungrateful. Don't let yourself believe this is an intellectual fault, not being a technical person doesn't mean you're dumb.

Re: Ask HN: Not smart enough to a programmer, where to take my life from here?

#30
Something no-one else has mentioned yet is learning methods. Stuff might not be sticking because you're using the wrong learning method for you. Instead of reading a book, maybe watch a video tutorial instead, learn by doing etc, get a mentor to pair program with?

Also look up 'imposter syndrome', it does sound a lot like you're suffering from self-esteem issues too so maybe get someone to talk with?

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