https://imgur.com/gallery/dzbQCj4
The only thing that changes with experience is the growing faith that whatever state you’re in now, you’ll be in the other shortly.
Coding Is Hard
11–20 of 170 posts
Re: Coding Is Hard
#12I have a lot of respect for self learners. Don't think I would have learned to code if I didn't feel the financial and academic pressure from learning it in University. I still remember my intro course being so mind numbingly difficult coming from an arts background. Simple if else code block assignment that I could complete in 1 minute now took me a whole weekend to initially do 10 years ago.
Re: Coding Is Hard
#13One of my students in a summer school class about programming just couldn't get their head around what a variable was. These concepts are very hard to teach when you are very familiar with them and they come natural to you.
Re: Coding Is Hard
#14> That's when I decided that I didn't need to go to college. I could just teach myself, for free, through all these online resources. > I went through all the tracks, from basic HTML (again) to JavaScript and even Ruby amd Python. And I was super proud of myself for doing just that. I then started this 2-day python crash course... > It's been 10 years since I first started learning how to code. And I still struggle w…
I'll agree with this as a self taught person.
I'll admit to being a little shaky on the types of programming needed in enterprise projects at the beginning (less of a focus on maintainable code, but probably more of a focus on what the machine is actually doing), as I only knew exactly what I needed to hack together whatever my hobby project was, but after 5 years of a career and working in 9 different languages it's been pretty easy.
I mean, occasionally there's something that takes a bit to work into my brain's L1 cache, like the precise semantics of prototypical inheritance in javascript, or call by name in scala, but for the most part, everything's been extremely transferable. A hashmap is still a hashmap in any language.
Re: Coding Is Hard
#15>It's just refactoring the codebase a bit, reorganizing it, making it cleaner and more structured Famous last words.
Once I took over a project that needed some SQL updates. Oh, and there was one issue in the issue tracker that needed looking at. How naive I was.
If I knew beforehand what it all would entail, I would never have taken over that project. Therefore I do feel lucky that I was so naive, it brought me many good things. Nowadays I easily see the scope of taking over a project and I hesitate a lot more doing that.
Re: Coding Is Hard
#16One of my students in a summer school class about programming just couldn't get their head around what a variable was. These concepts are very hard to teach when you are very familiar with them and they come natural to you.
teach them about memory first
Re: Coding Is Hard
#17> That's when I decided that I didn't need to go to college. I could just teach myself, for free, through all these online resources. > I went through all the tracks, from basic HTML (again) to JavaScript and even Ruby amd Python. And I was super proud of myself for doing just that. I then started this 2-day python crash course... > It's been 10 years since I first started learning how to code. And I still struggle w…
As I was reading through it, it sounded like he didn't have an actual idea of what to build. I'd expect an 'idea guy' would learn just enough to get going and start building whatever the idea was, and use the project as a means to guide him to whatever he needed to learn next. I find this to be the most effective way to learn, as all the learning gets applied right away, outside of the context of a very controlled problem given by the teacher.
The idea that he was jumping from course to course, across a bunch of different languages made it seem like he valued having the identity as someone who built something, but didn't know what to build. The gap year suggests that as well. I've been in the same boat and the only thing that moved me forward was having a project to work on that I cared about. In my case, I had a normal job with some down time, and learned to code to make that job easier... no courses, just reading the docs and trying to solve the problem right in front of me. I actually had programming classes in college before this, and while I passed without issue, I never felt I learned how to code or built by own stuff, and years passed between that course and when I felt I actually learned. Having a problem, breaking it down, and building a solution, one small bit at a time, was required to go from knowing some basic ideas of syntax to knowing how to solve a problem with code.
Re: Coding Is Hard
#18One of my students in a summer school class about programming just couldn't get their head around what a variable was. These concepts are very hard to teach when you are very familiar with them and they come natural to you.
A variable is a box where you can store a certain type of an object. For example, you can have a box with the right size and shape to store toy cars. At one point the variable (box) may contain a red toy car, and at another point it may contain a blue toy car.
If you try to put a banana in there it won't fit because it has the wrong shape for that. We say that the type of the variable (the box) doesn't match the object.
The analogy can be extended to talk about null values (empty boxes), arrays (boxes with slots for multiple objects), etc.
Re: Coding Is Hard
#19Have been feeling very frustrated this past week working on something. Started wondering if I am dumb or is this actually hard. Decided to write a simple quick blog post on it -
Frustration is something I can feel as well when I am stuck. It is not a productive emotional state. It means to feel stuck, and maybe I was even stuck before I began.
Sometimes I just need to take a step back and look at it the next day. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not. Sometimes taking a walk helps, or cycling, or taking a shower.
But when I feel frustrated, I know it's an uphill battle that will be mostly unproductive, mostly productive in getting a look at it, some reconnaisance.
Re: Coding Is Hard
#20Now try learning to code in C with a single book and no Internet, like I did.
Kids these days
:P