Attention - Need your valuable suggestions. Lack of self discipline and interest - but learn and love coding

Dear all,

I need some help and suggestions from you all people:
My desire is to become - one of the best and good programmers for reasons definitely.

I have completed courses on various sites - like free code camp (the best), khan academy, code academy, code avengers, reading books, watching you tube videos and much more.

Problems, that I am facing:

a. Lack of self discipline, to learn continuously. (doing some days and then stuck in other activities of life)
b. Not working with like minded people. ( since I am from commerce stream, I am the only one among my group who is learning to code).
c. Priorities to other tasks (less important then learning to code).
d. Lack of conceptual clarity. (it sometimes fell like I am doing rote fication)

It’s not that I am not trying or running or anything.

The only solution:

Is I should fall in love with coding as this will help overcoming all the problems. But despite trying my best I failed.

I want you to help me in providing ways by which how can I overcome this problem and the only thing I do for the coming years of my life - is TO CODE AND TO CODE and to get good at it. And to develop that burning desire.

Please help. Your valuable advice and suggestions would be of great help. Waiting eagerly.

I feel like I have been the same boat as you until just recently, about a month ago I finally found my passion and so far its holding up better than it ever has XD. Now I am literally thinking about/ doing coding all the time 4 hours or more of practice a day while working full time. Its literally all I think about right now and I can honestly say that I have found my passion for it.

In the past I have tried to learn coding many times but fell flat on my face with c, c ++, java, and python. I went through code academy, udacity, udemy, and many books as well but I realize now I was going about things all wrong.

For me I spent weeks doing a lot of self reflection and self assessment after getting laid off from a sales job (that i grew to hate). Particularly I read what color is your parachute and followed the advice in that and wrote a lot of things about myself and what I want out of a job and what I want to do everyday, and what skills I have. After realizing that at my core I love taking problems and picking them apart until I solve them, I now know I want a career in programming and I am determined to make that happen this time. Instead of learning programming to just to get me a job, I am learning it because I like the problem solving aspect of it and want to make living doing that.

So I would say do some serious self reflection on what you like to do, and what you want out of a job(do you want to work outside, do you want to travel), write these down on separate pieces of paper and then compare them to see what is similar. it sounds cheesy I know, but when you realize what you truly like to do, if it falls in line with something applicable to coding then your hooked. As for the social aspect I’m still working on that one since no one I know in person likes to code unfortunately :frowning: The guys/ gals in the chat room are pretty cool here though.

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Hi @pranjal8694

a. Lack of self discipline, to learn continuously. (doing some days and then stuck in other activities of life)

This is normal. I’ve written a bit about this here: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-I-feel-a-great-urge-to-do-something-else-whenever-I-start-doing-something-important/answer/Quincy-Larson

b. Not working with like minded people. ( since I am from commerce stream, I am the only one among my group who is learning to code).

This is normal. Very few people are lucky enough to work alongside developers at their current job. I strongly recommend going to as many coding-related events as possible. A weekend hackathon can give you a lot of practice collaborating with others in a short time.

c. Priorities to other tasks (less important then learning to code).

This is normal. You can find a million reasons to put off sitting down and coding, and if you’re stuck on something, you subconsciously will. I recommend using the Pomodoro technique (there are literally thousands of Pomodoro clocks that campers have built, and you can grab one and use it :slight_smile:)

d. Lack of conceptual clarity. (it sometimes fell like I am doing rote fication)

This is normal. Concepts will only become clear with practice. Don’t try to memorize everything or understand every concept.

Hang in there and keep coding! :slight_smile:

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Thanks a lot for your valuable suggestions. Will definitely help me.

Regards Pranjal

Heartiest Thanks. Your suggestions will definitely help me and yes I will hang in and will keep coding. Thanks once again. If there is any help I can offer please let me know.

Regards Pranjal

I started learning to code pre-Free Code Camp (which is too bad, would have saved me a lot of time!)

What I did was:

  1. Learned the basics. For me that was HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery on Codecademy
  2. Decided on a project that was slightly (or more than slightly) out of my reach. For me it was this video game
  3. That was hard. I didn’t know how to do almost anything I needed to do for that game, but I just broke it into small pieces like “Can I make a basic webpage where the game will be played… how to I write a DOCTYPE statement again?” and then I just added on another baby step at a time. “Can I create a block on the screen?” “Can I make it move?” “Can I make it stop moving at the right time?”
  4. I did a lot of Googling around and reviewing my Codecademy lessons to figure most of this out.
  5. I became obsessed with finishing that game, which probably took me 60 - 80 hours at that time.
  6. I finally finished it. I didn’t know it yet, but I probably had close to a junior developer skillset by the time I was done.
  7. I started another, even more ambitious, project.

That’s basically been my way to stay motivated. Pick a project that is interesting to me, and then obsess over it until done. I think its the best way to learn!