Sticking to one language for a long time really help. Frontend is fun, direct, graphical and can get you first job. JavaScript is challenge enough for itself. Fellow FCC. If you got stuck by a challenge, go turn dribbble.com design into web pages. Just keep yourself going. Don’t take “challenges” so serious, many of them aren’t practical.
I would like to share a little of my story with you to hopefully make you believe you can do it.
I study medicine, used to be a clinician, finished medical research study, and now I start learning coding, to become a web developer. Without any computer science related background, but I really enjoy coding and believe that I can make it if I put lots of my efforts and really enjoy what I’m doing. So, never give up just because you come across difficulty, unless you feel sick of coding and want to switch your path.
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It’s like you read my mind or something. Thanks for posting this. I know it’s not easy but I find comfort knowing that I’m not alone so I hope you to do. I’m going to push through and I hope you to do too!
DaveWave,
It seems to me like perhaps you are trying to solve the entire thing all at once instead of breaking it into steps. First, identify what needs to be accomplished. Then list the steps needed to accomplish those things, getting into more and more detail, breaking steps into sub steps,and sub steps into sub sub steps until you feel like you have 100% coverage of the solution - nothing extra, but nothing left out as well.
The above should be done ENTIRELY from start to finish without writing a single line of code. Instead it should be written in pseudocode, which is a human language / human readable representation of what will eventually become actual lines of source code.
You may even try simulating a poker game using an actual deck of cards. Deal out the hands to the “players” and then begin to apply the principles of card-counting to what has been dealt, what has been put down, and the probability of what is remaining in each of the players hands. I have no idea how to play poker, but I know that the rules are to be had and by applying those rules you can methodically make a determination of when to show or call or whatever.
Use debugging code to get a better feel for what is happening inside each method call. Do a console.log( message ) on variables so you can see things incrementing and watch decisions get made based upon certain conditions.
Like they say, “How best to eat an elephant? One spoonful at a time.” : )
Good luck,
Tom
Sorry - I meant Blackjack, not Poker, but the same principles apply.
@DaveWave I know feeling. I stopped learning how to program years thinking that I didn’t have the aptitude to learn but now I’ve shown a huge interest and found that I can definitely learn and not impossible. Just don’t stick to one resource and seek outside of FCC. There are plenty of courses and material out there that can help you out.
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Please, don’t give up. What you’re going through is totally normal. It takes time and practice and tearing your hair out in frustration. You’re training your brain towards a whole new way of thinking, and it’s really hard. You’re doing fine–just keep at it, and it will eventually click. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, maybe more time then that, but it will eventually click.
It does happen, I believe you are not the first person feeling that way and you certainly won’t be the last, most persons here once felt that way. Even sometimes I still feel that way, it just a matter of time determination and consistency. Giving up at this stage is not an option just keep pressing on, you get it right very soon.
…may the code be with you…
I totally agree with this. I bounce between FCC and Code Academy, browse through Codepen, have taken free Udacity and Kadenze courses, and I just got a couple of books on front end development too. Being able to learn this stuff through different perspectives, from different angles, has helped me a lot. Sometimes it takes a little info from a bunch of different sources to make things click for me. Every instructor will say the same information a little differently or point out an aspect they think is more important, and all these little differences add up to help me get a more complete picture of what I’m learning.
You’ll see studying from different sources encouraged a lot on these forums and there are plenty of lists of other learning resources to try on here too 
.
The funny thing about programiming is that there’s usually more than one way to do it. Maybe you would have come up with a solution that was different, but still worked well enough.
I’ve failed at several projects, I’ve hit my limits many times, and I’ve been fired from jobs. None of those things caused me to quit programming. Short version: never give up (but know when to cut your losses on a project).
Java is a pretty complicated ecosystem…have you thought about trying to apply your card-counting logic in a simpler language? Or even pseudocode? If you want tips on how to accomplish that goal, many of use here would likely be willing to help. There’s no shame on giving up a project when you’ve bitten off more than you can chew…please do not give up on programming in general though.
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Hello everyone. For years I have been unable to answer this question, I just can’t figure out if its for me or not. I have tried ALOT of difference resources and nothing works. After years I am still on a very basic level which is not too far from the fundamentals of programming. There was a time for a while where I was excited to code until I felt like I was going nowhere and from there I was got very frustrated at every small detail to do with code. I keep trying to constantly learn it again, but I don’t know why I am learning it, I feel like there is a part of me that wants to learn it but there is no goals or purpose. Coding is definitely the hardest thing I have tried to learn. What do you think?
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Coding seems like any kind of thing that you want to do better. You have to get into this, try every day and stop to think about purpose and goals(of life), put propose and goal in your project and you have to do a lot of projects. It’s easier when you have small goals, like finish Weather API or Random quote and those are very simple applications, than when you think “Ok, I know 1% that I should know to be the best”, and every project finished starts other. Everyone starts from the beginning, but the one that goes up step by step is gonna go far because he is worrying about complete something and not complete everything. Because of that people learn better things that they like.
I have two sentences to you, one is from my country “Devagar se vai a longe” or “Slowly you can go far”. And “You’re gonna fly high. You’re never gonna die, You’re gonna make it if you try. They’re gonna love you.” - Have a Cigar. It’s my favorite song of Pink Floyd.
I have this link for you too, this woman made 180 sites in 180 days. She put small goals and went ahead and got it. 180 websites - 180 days.
The only thing I can say for sure is that it’s not not for you.
Sounds like you’ve got a passion for it. If you don’t have any goal or purpose, then you can’t really fail, can you?
The past couple of years have been the beginning of an educational renaissance with regards to programming. I’m not sure how long you’ve been pursuing this for, but with better tools comes easier success. I would suggest applying yourself to the course here since it’s quite comprehensive, but don’t be afraid to branch out into CodeAcademy, the Odin Project, or whatever else strikes your fancy. The best thing you can do for yourself is to code every day* and build projects. Just reading and watching tutorials is not the same thing as learning, so make sure you’re actually doing things.
[*] At least 4 days per week, schedule permitting
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If you don’t quit, then it’s for you.
I don’t program for any goal or purpose. I just thought to myself, “I can’t imagine doing this menial crap job for the rest of my life…I need something else. What could I do all day and not get fed up with/ bored?” Eventually I figured out that coding is that thing. I don’t have a philosophy…it’s just better than digging ditches. I’ve got to eat, this is the thing I’d rather do to get my food.
If you quit, then it wasn’t for you.
If you don’t quit, then it’s for you.
Don’t be a quitter.
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Don’t give up man. Rewards will come when time is right!
Imposter syndrome. We all go through it. But keep in mind that computers are too complicated for anyone to ever remember everything. I read this somewhere once:
There are 3 people who are new to a codebase.
- You when you first write the code.
- The person who debugs your code.
- You when you debug your code 6 months later
That was my aha moment. Once you accept that it’s practically impossible to remember how you specifically solved a problem, you can stop worrying about whether you’ll ever be good enough.
I’d say look at it from a different perspective. All professional programmers know that reading code is harder than writing it. So if you can read someone else’s code and understand their mental model, you’re already ahead of the game.
Now for advice on moving forward? I hate walls of text, so if anyone’s interested, click below. But I can only tell you what worked for me. No guarantees, but hopefully still useful.
Here's what had the most impact for me...Plus a cookie in the end :slight_smile:
Pregame: understand that programming is really just manipulating data, and then (maybe) displaying it.
- try to solve the problem on your own (obviously)
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focus on what data transformations will solve the problem and the how (methods, datastructures, etc) will make themselves clear.
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E.G I need to take a group of filtered objects and update a property. I need to get them in an array and use array.map (most problems can be solved using the standard library with basic data structures)
- after you solve it or have reached a dead end, read someone else’s code.
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Take mental notes of how they solved the problem, not of how they wrote the code (methods, datastructures, etc).
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They must be mental notes. You want to develop a sense for solving abstract problems. Writing down what they did won’t help you grow solutions for yourself.
- Now the most important part, RECREATE what they did FROM MEMORY
I stress that it must be from memory. You can look up documentation or search google/stackoverflow, but do not look at their code again. It’ll be a struggle at first, but you’ll get past that hump eventually.
This should help train you to start thinking in different ways since you’ll have a faint grasp of how to solve it already. I find that getting that initial grasp on how to tackle a problem was the hardest thing when starting out. Recreating someone else’s project will give you that boost so that you can train your thought patterns. Think of it like training wheels for the mind.
Happy Coding!!
Cookie:
Don’t try to imagine what result some code will produce. Console.log it out (or use a debugger). It sounds obvious, but I’ve seen quite a few beginners feel that knowing what the result will be makes them a better programmer, when really, no one cares as long as you solve their problem. Console.log all the things!
if you’re into social proof, search for “codewars user JM-Mendez”
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Yes, study outside of FreeCodeCamp, online tutorials, videos, books, anything and everything. It would benefit you experience multiple perspectives of a concept. After a while, you’ll start recognizing patterns. As you read a book or watch a video, try to anticipate what the next step would be. In time, you’ll be right more often than wrong and even if your approach is different than the one presented, it may still work. Good luck and don’t give up!
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Hey DaveWave,
Thank you for your honesty. I am also not so new but i have used freeCodeCamp, read books, and watched videos. When it came to working on my first Front-End project of building my own web portfolio, I got stuck for almost 3 months not knowing how to go about it. Yeah the community is there to answer any questions and youtube for you to watch how to do videos, but i wanted to understand what i was doing and be able to say ahuuuu when am done with it. So i decided to network with Devs out there and asking questions which really helped me to understand what am doing more and also be more interested. Long story short I managed to finish my web portfolio 2 months later and now am enjoying my journey to be fullstack dev soon. I hope my story motivated you to hang in there. Cheers!
You can go check out my web portfolio and get inspired https://codepen.io/Chell0/project/full/AbdYRr/
Hey dude! Your honesty is great. I’m certain all of us have been greatly discouraged at some point when it comes to learning the behemoth that is coding. I’ve been at it a month and sometimes I wonder if I can actually do this. I’d agree with the others here - your work ethic and desire to learn will determine your outcome, not necessarily how much you can memorize or how many books you read. Like you, I have zero tech background - I work for a state agency doing admin work and was a missionary before that. But coding is a lot of puzzles, a lot of creativity, and a lot of parameters that are black and white in nature - either something works or it doesn’t! There’s no ambiguity - only not knowing. You can do it, my friend! One thing that’s really helped me was building my own website alongside learning. It’s fun to see a live website I’ve created and gives me opportunities to try out new things, learn different techniques, and practice all sorts of real-world development stuff.
Don’t give up! If this 30-year old government worker can learn to code, so can you! 