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Coding Is Hard

duttakapil.com

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Re: Coding Is Hard

#21

Post by yura »

In my experience it’s not supposed to be that hard, unless you’re working at the cutting edge or on really hard problems. But from what you’ve written it seems like you’re struggling with basic stuff.

Maybe you’re still lacking fundamentals? Seems like your strategy so far has been to grind tutorials and crash courses. They will make you feel like you’re learning a lot in a short time but in the end you’ll still not know what you’re doing, and you’ll keep struggling when facing new problems that are outside of the scope of the tutorial.

Maybe you’re learning from low-quality resources? Yes, the internet is full of free resources but most of them are useless and actually harmful, and some curation is needed. Instead of studying the basics over and over from endless free online tutorial/courses, just learn them once, the right way, from a high-quality resource instead. See: teachyourselfcs.com

Re: Coding Is Hard

#23

Post by codebolt »

Kamq wrote: post #14
dehrmann wrote: post #7

> 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…

I taught myself to code in high school and then did the 5 year CS degree at university. School taught me a lot of interesting stuff that I probably would've never picked up on my own, and gave me a much more grounded perspective on the entire field. But very little that was directly relevant for enteprise programming (which I've been doing professionally for over a decade by now).

Re: Coding Is Hard

#25

Post by yuktrn »

dehrmann wrote: post #7

> 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 still struggle after 15 years into programming, and I never published or finished anything because of "judgement anxiety". I waste days, weeks, months writing and rewriting code and then I decide to abandon it because "other developers are going to see how shitty of a developer I am and it'll jeopardize my reputation forever".

Re: Coding Is Hard

#26

Post by theLiminator »

david-gpu wrote: post #18
Manfred wrote: post #13

One 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 obje…

That analogy is heavily stretched with dynamically typed languages, you could say that it's a box that can hold anything, but then the value of the analogy falls apart.

Re: Coding Is Hard

#27

Post by nuancebydefault »

I find the story relating, though in a somewhat less dramatic sense.

Even after 20+ years of coding, there are very little moments of feeling on top and fully in control.

The other end -- feelings of "damn I don't get it, why won't it work" and the feeling of being overwhelmed by a big mess -- is quite more frequent.

The weird thing is that thinking "I'm no good at this" is an easy trap to fall into. Sometimes I feel software engineering must be one of the hardest jobs in terms of mental flexibility, constantly trying to figure things out and adapting to new frameworks and ever evolving ways of working.

But most probably there are plenty of other jobs with the same kind of complexities.

Re: Coding Is Hard

#28

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

Manfred wrote: post #13

One 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.

Did they not learn about variables in math class?

That's where I learned before I ever saw any code. When I did see the code I was confused by "x = x + 1" since it makes no sense mathematically, but assignment and state were obvious and intuitive after that.

Re: Coding Is Hard

#29

Post by narinxas »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #24
davedx wrote: post #20

Now try learning to code in C with a single book and no Internet, like I did. Kids these days :P

Luxury! I didn't have the benefit of a computer when I learned to program.

one man's luxury...

how did you learn to program computers without computers around?

Re: Coding Is Hard

#30

Post by amne »

davedx wrote: post #20

Now try learning to code in C with a single book and no Internet, like I did. Kids these days :P

I was blessed with a bunch of CHM files. I knew by heart how to browse that style of documentation. I still to this day prefer reference style to tutorial or by example.
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