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I'm in the verge of giving up programming and wondering what could I do before I give up to make sure I did what everyone did.

I've a bachelors degree in computer science. I didn't do it as well as I'd have liked to do, but that degree has gave me familiarity with most terms used in basic programming.

I spent last 3 months working on web development(I'm learning MERN). I learnt html,css,bootstrap, javascript and react till date(In bootcamp), but I failed to learn React. Even javascript, i'm no expert at. Even css, I learnt the basics but I'm not an expert when it comes to building half decent sites. Same for bootstrap. I can carve a site using html,css,bootstrap but it won't look good. I was completely impossible to learn when it came to react. Whenever I saw usage of useEffect and useState hooks and we start making changes in 10 different files for it, it confused me and I understood nothing.

I had access to world's best resources to learn books, tutorials, blogs, youtube, udemy etc. I had access to forums like this to get help and support but still this was tough for me.

I feel unlucky, sad and hopeless atm. Friends who were weaker than me in conventional college studies and academia have done jobs and internships but I'm failing to even learn something properly. I'm not jealous of them but just feel trash about myself.

People say do projects to learn but I really don't know how that works. For eg: [URL DELETED] This project. I make stupid stuffs like these and can't produce a good output that is playable. It's too hard for me.
These are some of my projects.
[URL DELETED]

[URL DELETED]

[URL DELETED]

[URL DELETED]

[URL DELETED]


I did all these projects without looking any tutorials.

I keep forgetting how I built something time and again. I nowadays try my best to add documentation though.

I'm 70% sure to give up programming but still I"d like to make sure I follow advices from fellow forum users about it who've spent their life around programming.

In 3 months, I am seeing no progress, except few days like:

1) When I carved a site on my own using html,css without looking tutorials.

2) When I carved a site on my own using bootstrap without looking tutorials.

My problems:

1) I've not break through'ed in programming. If I can make anything with javascript that's over 500 lines of code, I'd consider that a breakthrough. I'm aware LOC aren't a good metric but please try to understand what I'm trying to say. A big application using programming.

2) Even in css, I failed to make presentable sites. The coding bootcamp I feel is going too fast as well. Same for bootstrap, I made sites but I failed ot create beautiful sites. People recommend me frontendmentor.io but IDK what to do there? It looks sketchy to me. If there is something that can teach me css, I'd be so grateful.

3) After watching tutorials, I can't repeat what they've done in tutorial without watching the tutorial of project even though I understand each and every step they do in project.

4) I still am not fluent in ES6. I can't think in ES6. Arrow functions, map, reduce etc. I Understand them, but using them is different ballgame.

If you understand my situation, please guide me. I don't need roadmaps, any more tutorials but plain old guidance and advice on what to do by people who went through this situation

What I have tried:

I tried some projects shown above.
Posted
Updated 14-Jan-23 4:44am
v2
Comments
[no name] 14-Jan-23 11:25am    
Programming is about problem solving. Without a clear definition of a problem to solve, everyone will flounder (and they do). Unless you're passionate about a particular project or a job, you'll just be killing time. "Fun" personal projects only happen after you find one that pays; good or bad. You find motivating work; it rarely finds you. Freelance job sites are a way to find a "problem to solve" and get paid; which might be peanuts; but you'll never win if you don't buy a ticket.

1 solution

To prevent you being considered a spammer, I removed all the URL's from your post - they don't add anything and could easily get you hit with the Ban Hammer.

Quote:
People say do projects to learn but I really don't know how that works.
It works the same way as learning to ride a bicycle! You can watch the Tour de France all you want, frame by frame if you want to - the first time you get on a bicycle you are going to fall off because you don't have the "muscle memory" and "ingrained reflexes" keep one upright. The way you teach a child to ride a bike is to fit training wheels, and let their body slowly work out what to do. At some point, the training wheels can come off and the body takes their place.

But you could ask the child "How do you do that? What keeps the bike up?" and they still couldn't tell you - they don't know how they do it!

That's what a skill is: something that you only ever develop by using it.

Coding is the same: you can watch all the tutorials you want (though to be honest if you are watching them on YouTube et al that's normally a complete waste of time anyway) but you won't learn how to develop your own apps.

Can we teach you CSS? No, not really - we only get a small textbox in which to talk to you, and there are whole books written on CSS, mostly 500+ pages long (which is thick enough to club a seal to death with!). And they don't even cover Javascript - that's another, even thicker book.

Same goes for ES6, C#, and all the "detail languages" - they are complicated beasts these days thanks to the highly necessary frameworks (or "baggage" as some call them) they rely on.

Practice is the only thing which gets you competent at anything - even eating with a fork took a good deal of that before you stopped missing the mouth.

If you want to proceed and get a job in the industry, you have to practice:
1) Specify what you want to produce - overview, detail, user interface, completion conditions
2) Design a system that gets you through those stages, and decide what you need to make it work: Databases, test data, structures, algorithms.
3) Code the basic framework. Really basic. Test it. Make it work.
4) Flesh out a tiny bit of the project. Really tiny. Test it. Make it work.
5) Repeat 4!
At some point you reach the completion conditions, and you're done.

If you decide it's too much bother and forget about it, then maybe the project was too big for you, so shelve it and try something smaller then come back when you are more skilled.

Good luck!
 
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bhaskar977 20-Jan-23 22:43pm    
can you  suggest a micro level roadmap on what should I do now in order to learn programming?

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