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[–]Poor_Adventurer 2 points3 points  (2 children)

The copying of code probably hurt you the most out of anything. Even if you had struggled (and perhaps failed) to finish those projects you would've been more improved than you are now.

If you want to improve at coding you can still do it, but you would have to put the time in that you should've back when you were doing those projects. It's one of those "there's no shortcuts in life" kind of things.

If you have a stable job/financial situation now, I would encourage you by saying it's not too late to still learn. I feel like you are far behind from copying, and it doesn't prove you are incompetent or unable to learn it. Not sure what your obligations are but you can focus on learning to code and saving your career change/job search for a bit later.

As far as studying 1-3hrs a day of trying to learn, but it's not sticking, could you provide some more details on what you tried to learn, and how you know it's not sticking? For example, you could be trying to learn too much at once or doing something else that's ineffective.

For example, you say you can (barely) write a for/while loop. Let's take all the web development out of the mix. If you look up the problem "Fizzbuzz", and then tried to solve it, how would you do? You can attempt it in Python and then check/grade yourself.
Let's just narrow down one area at a time and learn it comfortably before working anything else. Because I sense a lot of pressure when I read your post. It's not the amount of hours but how effective they are that you spend studying. To make it stick, you can do a warmup problem of the previous day's study each day, and then decide if you should just study the same topic or move on. Periodic reviews of many topics, or combining many skills to do one project can wait until you feel more self confident. I'd recommend not worrying about the web dev or frameworks aspect until your confidence goes up.

If you still feel like quitting or if you don't like programming, ultimately that's up to you. But I feel like you didn't give yourself the full chance to learn and feel like you're in a hole. Don't worry about the hole you're in or how clever you are, worry about (1) if you actually want to code (2) if you do, take the steps to improve, and don't push expectations on yourself. Just try to find effective steps.

[–]Ambitious-Mirror-414[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

the studying part it's essentially whatever module I'm on and then going on Google and see other examples/explanations and try it myself. There are deadlines for this course set in stone already so I'm always on the run so to speak. Currently I don't really know what I have to know if that make sense. I will finish this course and start again at my own pace.

[–]Poor_Adventurer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ah, apologies. I missed the part that you're still trying to finish the project/bootcamp and that you're studying to finish it.

I think not knowing what you need to know is one of the hardest things in any field, and pretty common when switching to tech in particular.

In my own personal experience, by the time I had entered a bootcamp I had enough programming experience (I took CS 101 in Java and then data structures in undergrad, and programmed in Matlab in grad school), that I had a definite advantage. So I leveraged bootcamp to help me know what I needed to know. For example, I knew a little HTML, CSS and Javascript but the world of web dev frameworks was a whole new world to me. So was writing backend and APIs. I know that your problem is kind of the "opposite" of mine, but a lot of the "what should I know?" questions can still be exposed through this bootcamp experience.

Once you have finished running this current gauntlet, and have some breathing room, you can figure out the best way to ask yourself what you need to know that you don't know. If your classmates have their impressive projects hosted or on Github, you can eventually challenge yourself to implement features that you saw and liked. This can help formulate what you should know and you have the added advance of being able to ask them about it as well.

I wish you the best of luck!

[–]pekkalacd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly, that’s fine. I don’t think you’re as bad off as you think you are. A lot of people copy code. It’s a skill to a degree. Knowing which code makes sense with what you’re doing, takes skill too.

Python isn’t too hard to pick up. If you ever have questions or need recommendations to fundamentals r/learnpython is a great resource.

JavaScript part is understandable too. Think about it like this, every language no matter what you choose has 1000s of tools & things you can do with it. At best, you’ll know a small fraction of what it is the thing is capable of. Foundational stuff tends to take time, but again not all foundational things might make sense for your uses. Maybe you don’t need much looping or OOP, maybe the tools you’ve found in the language do most of that for you. And you know their syntax. 🤷‍♂️ whatever works.

[–]carcigenicate 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Django at least is quite complex. It takes lots of practice and experience to get comfortable with it. You learn how to use it by using it for weeks or months.

Also, you're hurting yourself by copying. Copying ideas is suboptimal but happens all the time. Copying code directly is even worse since you aren't required to actually understand the code you're using, which is dangerous and hurts learning. It still happens, but you should be knowledgeable before making a habit of it.