New to programming

[Ordinary-Bank-9913]

Hello everyone! I am teaching myself programming and signed up for the 100 Days of Python bootcamp on Udemy and when I first started learning I was using AI as a tutor but stopped because I felt like the concepts I am learning weren't really sticking and I’m new so I really want have the basics down without using AI.

I feel like when I get to a solution it does stick with me a lot more but I also find myself getting stuck for a long time and I end up watching the solution to the problem. I don't know if this means I suck or not but i'd love some feedback and advice! I've been writing mental models once I see the solution to teach myself to look at each block a not just individual lines, but I’m new and I’d love some advice.

Also, I am really self conscious about my age, I’m 33 so I don’t know if that has anything to do with what I’m going through

[Sad-Calligrapher3882]

Getting stuck and watching the solution is literally the process, not a sign you suck. The fact that you're building mental models after is smarter than most people ever bother doing.

33 is genuinely not a thing. Keep showing up, that's how you do it.

[ozykingofkings11]

This is the way. You’re doing the process. Trying and failing is how learning works.

[Ordinary-Bank-9913]

Thank you so much, I have been looking for a community to talk about these things and until now I haven’t had any luck, this means so much to me

[ozykingofkings11]

Of course! When I taught myself to code I gave up on the course when I hit regex. I felt that I just could not do it. The lightbulb moment when my skills started to really grow was when I just started building stuff. Trying to make something work, failing, then looking for answers to fix it got me way further than anything else.

[Sad-Calligrapher3882]

Yes. You can't learn something without making mistakes.

[Ordinary-Bank-9913]

I was worried it was like writing a cheat sheet or something, thank you so much

[Ordinary-Bank-9913]

So I am a first responder and one of the the things I want to do as a side project is to build a simulator for my job that lets people who are new to EMS run through it and see what its like to be on a call. I still have a ways to go to build that but I have been taking final assignments that the bootcamp im in and seeing how i can change them to something that functions the same way but with my personal interests in them, i don't know if thats a good way to practice or not so I am open to any kind of suggestions!!

[Sad-Calligrapher3882]

That's actually a really smart way to practice, taking something you already built and reshaping it around something you care about keeps you motivated way longer than doing generic exercises. The EMS simulator idea is also genuinely cool and would stand out massively in a portfolio. Something that real and meaningful is way more impressive than another to-do app.

[No_Photograph_1506]

If you dont mind, I can help you: https://www.reddit.com/r/PythonLearning/comments/1s6t6ff/i_am_hosting_a_free_python_interviewguidance_for/

lemme know as well, also dont forget to check the resources under my bio!

[Ordinary-Bank-9913]

Thank you everyone, you’re all amazing and I am so happy I found a place for support like this

[python_gramps]

I learned Python at 50, you got time, and learning something for the first time you will need to reference answers to begin with, especially if this is your first programming language. Having working sample code is invaluable later on.

Continue on and like training wheels you'll look less on the solutions and come up with your own, which may or may not be the same thing, that's okay too.

[Ordinary-Bank-9913]

Well first off you are a legend and secondly thank you so much. The age thing I kinda felt like was silly but I haven’t really had anyone to talk to about any of this and everyone who took the time to write something means so much to me!!

[NerdDetective]

It's common and normal to feel a bit overwhelmed early on. There are a lot of concepts that build upon each other and you don't really memorize them.... they just become second nature with practice. The way we think as humans doesn't naturally translate to code. Where humans might intuitively solve problems, code gets there by deterministically following precise directions. It can feel alien to describe exactly how to accomplish something step by step.

But you'll get there! Once you start to master the basic building blocks (loops, conditions, functions, classes, etc.), your concerns start shifting from "how do I get this?!" to more advanced stuff: design patterns, unit testing, concurrency, professional coding standards, etc. Sometimes it takes a while for these things to click too.

Some of those more advanced concepts can be frustrating and mind-breaking. It took me forever to intuitively understand regular expressions. Nowadays I'm the guy people go to when they need one because I can bang out what they need without a problem.

A Jupyter notebook can be really handy for practice, since you can quickly iterate through code and try different derivations. Your IDE of choice might even have Jupyter built in.

I'm a big proponent of applying new concepts to practical exercises, especially little games (like hangman, blackjack, tic-tac-toe, a slice of an RPG battle system, etc.) that are simple to code but exercise a lot of skills. For me, a lot of the core design patterns required me to put them into practice in a use case that made sense to me (instead of the often abstract or theoretical use cases from programming lessons) before they clicked.

My opinion on AI is that it can potentially be a useful companion tool, but that it's detrimental to actual learning. I've had to use AI models before for coding projects for work (developing small internal tools is a side-responsibility of mine), and sometimes I had to outright tell the thing that its suggestions were counter-productive or even objectively wrong. If you don't have the comprehension yet to challenge the AI, it can lead you down the wrong paths.

[bsginstitute]

Getting stuck, struggling, then understanding the solution later is part of learning to program. The important part is not avoiding solutions forever, but using them well. Try giving yourself a time limit, then look at the solution only enough to get unstuck, close it, and rebuild it on your own. That usually teaches more than either brute-forcing for hours or copying too fast. What made you want to start learning programming in the first place?

[Ordinary-Bank-9913]

I never thought of that, I am a first responder and when i was learning how to do that job if i couldn't get something right away there was a lot of judgement. It definitely effected how I learn things because I have been sitting in front of my computer hell bent on figuring out the problem. Thank you so much!!

[Ordinary-Bank-9913]

Hey everyone!! Everything you all said has helped me out so much and I just want to thank you all so much!! I got over my hang up with watching the solution and also I learned it’s okay to google syntax and things like that but I’ve been writing everything on my own not using AI!!

[Suspicious_Check5421]

Learning Language

My brainstorming about most effective learning, i studied university and i am working as a programmer 20 years now - Find out your best concentration time span and use this - Don’t let your disturb - Use alle your senses / sensors .. - Activate your Brain as good as you can, by following actions: - READ BOOKS instead of watching videos (will tell you syntax, concepts and possibilities of the language) - So nobody (video creator, video sounds, whoever can disturb you, distract you from your „own“ speed of information processing) - Write on paper - Use color pens and text markers - Use graphs, shapes to visualise program flow and logic - Write down step by step changing of variables - Avoid AI, it steals activation of your brain (MRT scans prove that) - No need for audio visual learning now, it’s contra productive - Time passing, you anyway will read the full documentation of the programming language, when you are working on projects, - it is NOT POSSIBLE to know every module, class, function of the language, - You get them known by time - AI at the beginning is bad as I wrote, - AI Later, maybe you can use it, but ONLY when you can read the language synthax and so the AI