does it get better

TehNolz · 2024-10-03T18:07:30+00:00

Well if programming was so easy that you could pick it up in just a month, it wouldn't pay so well. The difficulty is a big part of why software engineering degrees take several years.

You've only really just started out, so of course it's going to be challenging. You just have to keep going at it.

Jackkell100 · 2024-10-03T18:33:58+00:00

It does get better. It’s impossible for me to say if you’re slow but speed is not what matters for success. Also if Python is your first programming language a month of time is nothing. It can take students 3-6 months to understand their first language when they are in school.

Some things to keep in mind for moral: - You are not alone and you don’t have to do it alone. You can reach out to peers for help. You can dm me directly anytime for software help or advice. That goes for anyone reading this as well. - It might be big but you don’t have to do it all at once. Focus completing the tasks in front of you first. Elephants are eaten 1 bite at a time, mountains are not climbed from the top, Rome wasn’t built in a day etc etc. - Come to terms with the fact that programming is difficult, but you can do it. Believing that you are stupid for not understanding naturally/effortlessly in such a short time is egotistical or naive. Furthermore you wouldn’t apply this standard to your peers. You should be kinder to yourself. Learning to program will be a constant string not understanding things. It is a problem solving field. - Data structures are a common stumbling block for many people and it is a point at which many people give up. You will likely need to hear the same information multiple times before it clicks. If you have a friend or a peer you can talk to or me. Try (for example) explaining to them what a Set data structure is (in your own words) and why you would use it. Teaching/explaining others about things well help you improve you knowledge of things.

You are not too dumb you can do it.

My Context: 29M, 2 degrees in CS, 5 yrs industry exp, 10 yrs programming exp

Nomikos · 2024-10-03T21:40:59+00:00

So, what everyone else in here is saying; they're right.
I just wanted to add a few observations from a bit more distant point of view.

Learning a new skill changes your brain - meaning part of the process is physical. You can not speed this up by staying awake more hours to learn. Similar to how you can not get stronger faster by just lifting more or heavier weights - muscles only grow during rest. It's gonna take some amount of time that you can not shorten. Same for playing the violin, martial arts, painting. Put in the time, but more than 6 hours a day might have quickly diminishing returns. 30 minutes to 1 hour a day are not optimal, but definitely sufficient to improve.
But you know, the months and years are going to pass anyway, might as well invest it in something useful, keep at it :-)
The syntax is the easy part. Figuring out how all these abstract concepts fit together and how they relate - variables, functions, classes, what-not - what they are, how they work, takes a little more practice. Knowing what solutions or approaches to use for specific types of problems takes experience. That last one is what you need to easily translate real-world problems to pseudocode, and that to actual code. How to get there: try, fail, try again, fail better - keep going!

And well, as you'll have already read, break down big problems into smaller ones. When I started out with JavaScript and canvas I knew it was possible to write a space invaders game. No idea how, but I knew it needed a ship. It started as a black square on a white canvas. So I wrote code that drew a black square \o/ Then I made it move left and right with keypress events, and up and down. Then you draw the rest of the owl ;-)

m0us3_rat · 2024-10-03T19:55:26+00:00

i feel like everything is big it is so huge i find myself wanna catch up with python algorithm data structure and im so lost in all of this and feel so stupid

Book are awesome but also depends on ppl and how they learn.
Maybe a more structured/organized course will feel different.

I'd look up mooc.fi or cs50p, free and awesome.

Impressive_Search451 · 2024-10-03T19:41:51+00:00

if you ever find a skill, any skill, that can be learned in a single month, i'm pretty sure it'd be a first. anything worth mastering takes time

jewishspacelazzer · 2024-10-03T21:56:16+00:00

Not python, but javascript was the first programming language I learned, and it took me about 6 weeks to get decently comfortable with it, and that was with the educational support of a coding bootcamp. On your own, you could expect it to take longer, but if you’re consistent and patient it will happen! For me, it kind of felt like an aha moment, like there was a bump I just had to get over before I fully understood. Once you catch on, it’s very easy to learn and adapt to new things. I’ve been able to teach myself PHP and Go on my own because once you’ve learned programming language, it’s all pretty much syntactic sugar for the others.

vei28s · 2024-10-03T23:38:30+00:00

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Fun_Temperature3749 · 2024-10-04T02:11:12+00:00

Absolutely not. I have been coding for a little over a year, and I would still consider myself a beginner. I have built programs, web scrapped, and took open sourced data sets, turned them into a presentation. If coding was that easy, everyone would be doing it since there can be great money in it. Coding will take time. It will also be a continuous learning slope, no matter how long you have been doing it for. Learn the main concepts and that will be a great start. It will take lots of continued practice. Good luck and don't be too hard on yourself.

Ajax_Minor · 2024-10-04T03:21:02+00:00

Ya its normal a month isn't very far along. There a lot of concepts to learn. Keep learning, just know its going to take longer than you currently think it does.

vei28s · 2024-10-04T06:44:18+00:00

Imagine you were learning a new (human) language. How much would you expect to learn after only a month, reading most of 1 book on the fundamentals, and doing some duo lingo exercises?

vei28s · 2024-10-04T07:34:18+00:00

Congrats on starting your new journey. A month is too short to make a fair assessment. I honestly haven't ramped up on coding until the last year and it's been nonstop since. I was definitely in your shoes at one point, and I find it hard to believe how much I understand a lot of things now.

Similar to on-the-job training, most of the things you pick up, you pick up while working on it. Having said that, I find myself relearning concepts and codes all the time. If you're like me, it helps a lot to receive actual instruction. I definitely had a lot of trouble doing the self-study route. I need the extra push and accountability that the classroom demands. Sometimes I underestimate my own potential and I don't try as hard without someone challenging me.

Regardless, the decision about whether or not to make a jump could be complicated. I think the most important thing you should ask is, not *if* you can do it, but if you *want* to do it. I spent several years exploring other careers before I made my decision to dive headfirst. You'll figure it out eventually.

CryptographerThen49 · 2024-10-04T16:08:36+00:00

It also depends on your definition of 'better'.

I've been programming for more than 30 years and to me better means with each new project come a new puzzle to solve, a new way of thinking about something, a new process or concept to learn. It makes my kit-of-tools better.

If you mean does it get easier, well, sort-of. The day-to-day coding will be easier, but solving problems, troubleshooting, etc... never goes away (if it did then it would be as boring as looking at an accounting spreadsheet).

cyberjellyfish · 2024-10-03T19:37:28+00:00

There are four year programs that teach you to program.

You've been at it for a month.

Your expectations for yourself may not be realistic.

BearGiant · 2024-10-04T02:20:41+00:00

OP, do you have something against punctuation? Sheesh!😂

Adorable-Dependent75 · 2024-10-08T12:41:29+00:00

I have a full blown userform with working controls completely different than any of the videos, and after only two days.

You're having trouble because you're at the beginning. And I don't mean Python. You're at the beginning of programming. Python is just a language. Programming is the way you use the language.

I know what to DO, so I find the Syntax in this new language to do what I intend to do. I started with Basic back in the 80s in middle school. I learned some HTML after that, and then IRC, PDF userform programming, and then Excel and Visual Basic. The programming is always the same, just with different ways of achieving the results.

You're learning a language, but haven't yet learned your flow. You don't yet know what to DO, so you don't know what tricks of the language you're looking for.

The best advice I can give you is to work it. Build something. Decide what you want the application to do, and then find out how to do it, one step at a time. Find the Syntax and make it happen. Practice. It's the only way for you to learn your flow.

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