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Why is learning to code still hard?

Hello folks!

I have witnessed countless people struggle to learn how to code and it is always painful to watch. Since I've done it for ages now the pain of rewiring one's brain has long faded but I can totally understand the frustration.

I am a strong believer in learning by doing what you love the most. That differs from person to person but I am sure that building a TODO app is not something that makes everyone happy and motivated.

Furthermore, I think that people will have different approaches to learning if they have different backgrounds. Let's say, someone with a business degree might look at the code as a business process of some sort, whereas a cook, for example, might think of it as a recipe. Very simplified examples but you get the point.

Last but not least, what I found the most helpful for people who are learning is watching the actual code wizards at work. Even an hour of just watching someone do their art might help you understand the fundamental building blocks of that art.

I know there are already millions of resources out there but for some reason, there are also millions of folks that want but not yet know how to write code and there must be a reason for that.

That being said, I would like to know:

  1. What were the biggest hurdles for those who learned coding from scratch? What were your biggest motivations?
  2. For those who yet don't know how to code - why is that? What are your biggest challenges at the moment?
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    1. Understanding all the concepts. I feel sometimes people who are experts tend to gloss over the fundamentals. Classes, vs objects, vs functions, methods. How does something work and why. Etc.

    2. I would say when not understanding how something works, getting stuck. Google for hours not finding or understanding a solution, or ask a question on stackoverflow.com and get bombarded with negative downvotes. I found that not inspiring and quit the opposite.

    It's just so difficult to learn and try and retain all the complexies, meanings etc. It's just impossible. I know google is the answer but it's frustrating at times.

    1. 1
      1. Agree. Fundamentals are important. The "how does something work and why" part, though, really depends. That is what's beautiful about coding - many complicated things are abstracted from you. You don't need to know how Math.random() works - you just know that it gives you a random number.
      2. I see. Do you think having a small community, for example, would help in such cases?

      As I mentioned, it probably boils down to motivations. If you really want to learn and you put in hours, you will get through all the downs.

      1. 1
        1. Can't see why not. I guess the question would be what's different from communities that are already there. Reddit etc.
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    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 2

      By the way, it is quite enjoyable to code without the internet.

      I was once on a flight and doing interview homework in Java where I had to make a service that supports multithreaded transactions. I found myself looking deep into native Java libraries themselves to understand how those work in order to figure out how to do things. I feel like I learned much more in those few hours than if I would have just googled and copy-pasted something.

    2. 2

      Learning without the internet and English is pretty impressive @anilkilic.

      So to sum up your approach:

      1. Pick one source and try and learn the fundamentals (language doesn't matter, the source doesn't matter too)
      2. Play around with things, google, copy-paste, see how changing them affects whatever you are building
      3. Repeat 2
      4. ???
      5. Profit

      Motivation, I guess, is the biggest thing. As with everything, you have to turn up and do a little bit every day.

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        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    3. 1

      Hmm! What's wrong with javascript?

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        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

        1. 1

          I believe It's doing wonders for front-end work but nothing much in other areas.

          I must disagree with you here. JavaScript, first and foremost, is very good for prototyping things. Sure, it has its own issues as you scale but which ecosystem doesn't?

          And error messages are only as good as your error handling is.

          In general, I would say there is no good or bad language. In the context of learning, anything is good. Of course, if your goal is to get hired quick or end up in a specific industry you should pick the one that is with the highest odds to get you to the goal.

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            This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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