I found out my love for programming during a session break very late last year, but didn’t show any seriousness until lockdown having left school for home.
I started with one Cousera outdated course 'cause i was a bit confused where to begin. Not much longer, like after 2weeks i found what i was looking for( the learning path) when i discovered fCC – it was dumbfounding, though!
I began well, started studying day-in-day-out until i finished the freecodecamp HTML-CSS curriculum (skipped some parts that i felt i already know, though) supplemented with MDN docs.
My motivation got so high when i finish the CSS thing that i bought JS and node js course on Udemy.
But here i am struggling with the biggest dude - JavaScript. Although, i began well like 4 days ago, yet i started to get overwhelmed since i began doing stuffs like manipulating arrays…
I feel like i am getting sth wrong. Maybe because i am using freecodecamp, MDN and Udemy at the same time. Or maybe i am starving my sleep(don’t have enough afternoon chances). Sometimes i just feeling like i know nothing about the language i am learning…
The vibe is still high as before, but if I don’t find a solution to my problem before school resumes… I don’t know, though.
After reading a couple of advise here, i decided to seek an advice of my own; Perhaps i will get a befitting solution to my problem.
1 Like
This shit is hard. It’s hard to learn and it’s hard to do. Professional programmers are people who are paid to be frustrated.
All this to say: it’s ok to feel frustrated and overwhelmed. It’s ok to walk away from a problem to get some fresh air, a snack, or some sleep. It’s ok to ask for help.
8 Likes
Well then, I will just take the break.
Thank you though.
As does pretty much everyone! Learning programing (either via JS or another language) isn’t easy, and take some time getting used to. If your starting to have a tough time that is to be expected. If you were somehow completely fine learning Arrays I’d actually be more concerned you weren’t actually grasping the material. Struggling means your learning 
Just do what you can, if you don’t have the time to spend to get deep into work then don’t push it and lose sleep. Less sleep and energy for the next day means it will be harder to focus. Either make time, or just spend the time you have as effectively as possible.
You can have this feeling on day 1 and day 1 thousand. Sometimes things just don’t make sense. The goal of “getting good” isn’t to never feel that way, rather its being able to get out of that feeling after time. More experience means you might be able to get out of issues easier, but that all comes with getting stuck in the first place! Don’t feel like getting stuck is a bad thing, rather think of it as an opportunity to learn, succeed, and overcome your problem so you can tackle it in the future 
Keep up the work, keep grinding against the problems, keep getting stuck, and keep getting unstuck. Google your brains out, seek the answers, fix your problem, and learn how or why you got stuck and how your fix works so you can handle it next time. Don’t expect to not get stuck, or have problems, it doesn’t work that way. Expect it and over come it
Good luck, keep building and learning!
8 Likes
Thanks a bunch for the advice @bradtaniguchi
It’s normal to get overwhelmed. Sometime you don’t have to know everything and walk in blind. Rest assured that you are not different case, we all start out confuse. Rest your brain and take things slowly. I personally just started JavaScript and what I do is I only spent 30 minutes learning a day so that my mind won’t get tired and can absorb everything. Good luck, man.
Cheers
1 Like
Definitely get some sleep and take a break and then try again, if you still like it. I’ve been working as a JavaScript developer for about 17 years and I still struggle daily with things that are new to me - and there’s always something new to learn.
Just try and build stuff, don’t try to memorize and understand everything on the first try, just make sure you keep trying. Watch videos, read articles, and above all, try stuff. It will get better…at least until the next thing that bites you. 
3 Likes
Thank you…
I adopted that already today… I felt like i needed to go really slow.
Thanks again.
1 Like
17 years?! That’s cool.
Thanks for the advice. It means a lot to me.
I’m going to be honest my friend! I’m a senior at UCSC for CS BS … It took me exactly 25 days (no hints just me) to complete the certification at the rate of 8-10 hours a day. Its definitely tough and especially if you have no experience programming. I recommend that you look for patterns (math patterns) in a problem. Once you recognize a pattern, then in plain English speak aloud on what you want to get done. For example iterate through array, if I see a multiple of 2, store this number and continue, syntax and output is the 2nd half of the battle. This helps a lot, trust me!! Once you got what you want in plain english, start to translate that into pseudo code… (YOU WILL SAVE a lot of time if you pseudo code and write down the logic), after that every 5-10 lines of pseudo code start testing your logic out in terms of output (get use to console.logging stuff), and debug from there.
Its hard stuff, but very rewarding! I felt that it sharpened my programming my skills, but it did drive me crazy sometimes. You are not alone and don’t give up! People struggle all the time with programming, just breath and step away for a few hours, maybe a day or two and comeback… DONT GIVE UP, you’ll get it and start to see patterns eventually.
2 Likes
