Is coding hard for you?

[chubbyfatazn]

The intro courses at my school (top ten undergrad CS) had us occasionally do practice exercises from this site as well as this site.

I have on idea how far you actually are, but I actually thought doing a lot of those exercises in my free time helped me out in the long run. I tend to do better when learning things in small steps before combining them all together to get the bigger picture, and those little exercises helped me to do exactly that.

If you don't like the idea of sitting in front of a computer and spending a crapton of time learning how to do something, then don't even consider doing CS.

 

[Maximilian]

The intro courses at my school (top ten undergrad CS) had us occasionally do practice exercises from this site as well as this site.

I have on idea how far you actually are, but I actually thought doing a lot of those exercises in my free time helped me out in the long run. I tend to do better when learning things in small steps before combining them all together to get the bigger picture, and those little exercises helped me to do exactly that.

If you don't like the idea of sitting in front of a computer and spending a crapton of time learning how to do something, then don't even consider doing CS.

First links not working but second one looks good :thumbsup:! Gonna plow through some of these.

 

[EagleKeeper]

You do not have the drive/desire.

While only in HS; there is nothing requiring you to stay in computer programming.

It sounds like you have either
1) problem conceptualizing the problem and a way to solve the problem
2) ability to understand how to use/implement a given language.

You can go into other IT areas, but given your issues/explanations stay away from programming if any language at this point.

 

[toughtrasher]

The intro courses at my school (top ten undergrad CS) had us occasionally do practice exercises from this site as well as this site.

I have on idea how far you actually are, but I actually thought doing a lot of those exercises in my free time helped me out in the long run. I tend to do better when learning things in small steps before combining them all together to get the bigger picture, and those little exercises helped me to do exactly that.

If you don't like the idea of sitting in front of a computer and spending a crapton of time learning how to do something, then don't even consider doing CS.

I do like the idea of sitting in front of a computer working. That's what I'm doing right now with my money making ventures! But the real main problem is focusing and figuring out which exactly to do, should I stick with IM or should I read my book? I'm thinking trying to do both, spend some hours online and then spend some hours practicing and getting it together. What do you think?

You do not have the drive/desire.

While only in HS; there is nothing requiring you to stay in computer programming.

It sounds like you have either
1) problem conceptualizing the problem and a way to solve the problem
2) ability to understand how to use/implement a given language.

You can go into other IT areas, but given your issues/explanations stay away from programming if any language at this point.

I did have the drive and desire, until the pace got way too fast and I just felt hopeless.
Anywho, I'm still going to stick with computer programming because overall, it is a fun course when I actually keep up with the pace. But that was long ago back in the first half of the year last year.

I find joy in programming, but only when I get the stuff. Do you know what I mean?

 

[EagleKeeper]

You do not have the drive/desire.

While only in HS; there is nothing requiring you to stay in computer programming.

It sounds like you have either
1) problem conceptualizing the problem and a way to solve the problem
2) ability to understand how to use/implement a given language.

You can go into other IT areas, but given your issues/explanations stay away from programming if any language at this point.

I did have the drive and desire, until the pace got way too fast and I just felt hopeless.
Anyhow, I'm still going to stick with computer programming because overall, it is a fun course when I actually keep up with the pace. But that was long ago back in the first half of the year last year.

I find joy in programming, but only when I get the stuff. Do you know what I mean?

I beg to differ with your perception.

I did have the drive and desire, until the pace got way too fast and I just felt hopeless.

The pace getting fast is more that you kept falling further and further behind and neglected to have the confidence to talk to the instructor about it.

Instructors do not accelerate the pace of learning through the class; they have determined what the students in general are capable of and align the material to that.

there is a saying that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

I find joy in programming, but only when I get the stuff. Do you know what I mean?

Looking at the words you posted; as long as it is easy; you have no problems; but as the workload increase/tougher; you lose interest in it.

Therefore programming is not for you as a primary subject. Problems do not get easier; they get harder.

 

[piasabird]

You dont learn programming by just doing homework or reading a chapter. You should be coding all of the examples to fully understand them. So what kind of programming language are you wanting to study? (You said Java)

I have found students need to tak a beginners class in some programming language like C or Pascal before they try to take an Object oriented language like C++ or JAVA 2. You have to learn to crawl before you learn to fly a plane!

Java can be a bit hard to conceptualize because it is object oriented. I think shools make a mistake teaching Java before they understand a simple programming language and fully know how to build loops and decision trees and use input and output routines. Often the instructors dont know how to explain things to students. The key is really to just code everything you see as examples. Programmers code to learn. Looking at something in a book just isnt good enough.

 

[sandorski]

By no means am I a Programmer, but I am a first year College dropout whose course was Computing Technology in 1986. :biggrin:

Anyway, when I was in College one of the hardest things for me was that I just wasn't very interested in doing the tasks required of me. Every assignment was basically the coding of a Database management program. These were all very specific, the Fields were hard coded, leaving no room for User customization, like DBaseIII(the main consumer Database software at the time). This made the Programs fairly easy, but very repetitive and uninteresting. As I said, I ended failing, I blame Assembly as I just couldn't wrap my head around it and ended up spending too much time on it causing my other Classes to be neglected.

Fast forward 10 years to a summer of boredom. I have a fair sized collection of Trading Cards which I decided I should write a Database for, just for kicks. Whipped out my old Pascal textbooks as I had Turbo Pascal 5.0 and decided to get to work. At first I was just going to hard code Fields and such, but had an issue with different collections containing different Stats or in cases being completely unrelated to other collections. After mulling over things for awhile, I started to figure out how to make a more dynamic Program. One where the User can define its own desired Fields and such. The more I thought about it, the more exciting the whole project became, I was essentially writing something that was on par with what was once the bleeding edge of software development. I got distracted though and never did finish it, but for a month I had a really good time just coding and thinking of coding.


tl:dr - super short version

Try writing a program for something that interest you. Your mind can think more creatively, IMO, when you have some interest in the outcome.

 

[Phantomaniac]

I agree with the above poster: coding is a lot more enjoyable when its used to solve a problem that interests you. I have a hard time staying focused on programming books/tutorials because they create fake "problems" that don't really apply to me. A few months ago I wanted some sort of system to organize my collectables. I brushed up on my HTML, CSS, and dove headfirst into a PHP framework without knowing much about PHP. I built one tutorial app in a few days as a learning exercise for the framework, then built the app I wanted to in a week (most of that was debugging and looking up documentation). It was quite satisfying once finished!

I agree that pacing and assumptions by the professor can be a problem though. I ended up withdrawing from Calculus 2 in college for those reasons.

Edit: To answer the actual question, no, coding isn't hard for me. But I also spent years writing programs in TI-Basic and Visual Basic before getting to Java and beyond in college.

 

[Markbnj]

This thread amuses me. It's a little like asking an EE whether circuit design is hard, or asking a civil engineer whether it's hard to design a bridge. A particular circuit, or a specific bridge, might be more or less difficult. A specific practitioner might be more or less fluent in the current application and task. But overall these are difficult technical disciplines that only a small portion of the public will ever be competent to work in. Software is the same. Of course it's hard.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I never found coding hard in college, in fact I found they went too slow. Most of the stuff was introductory and if you are in computer science and don't know that stuff then you have problems. Though it seemed I was the only one who actually had prior coding experience, most had never coded at all. They should have spent a week MAX covering the basics like variables, functions, loops etc then move on to more advanced stuff.

We never even made any GUI/graphical stuff.

When I'm doing hobby coding, sometimes I do find some stuff hard, I'll get caught up on something that I'm having trouble figuring out... stuff that they should have teached in school but didn't. for example, TCP networking. First time I had to do that it was super hard, because there's just so many lines of code needed, then trying to figure out how to do non blocking sockets etc...

Once I found the proper tutorial online to show me how, I wrote a wrapper class so next time I just need to use that class. In school I also hated the "fake" problems, I rather code something useful. There's one project we did that actually was fun, it was a battleship game. I went all out and it turned out pretty awesome. Was just text based though... never learned graphics coding, something I do want to get into though.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Fundamentals classes are only supposed to cover the basics. My college gave you a test at the start and let you skip if you already knew the basics, or sent you to a "computer" class if you didn't know things like what a mouse was (no joke).

 

[Net]

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

[Gryz]

Programming is a very broad topic.

Programming touches all kinds of different fields. From mathematics to physics. From databases to telecommunication. From writing device drivers to Artificial Intelligence. From User Interfaces to web-programming. Programming has so many different faces. When people talk about programming, they all talk about something different.

Also, there is a huge difference in competency. Is it easy to learn to play tennis ? Yes. Is it easy to become a professional ? Hell no. Is it easy to win Wimbledon ? On forums like these you get high-school students, CS-university students, amateurs, professional programmers and maybe even top experts to all discuss a subject. How can you say something is easy or hard, when the discussion is amongst tennis-players ranging from toddlers to John McEnroe ?

In my opionion, many people lack the skills to learn to become a good programmer. They can't deal with abstractions. They can't visualize. They can't concentrate enough to spend the necessary time on a problem to solve it. They are sloppy. They are unimaginative. They lack the skill to search for info themselves (some people just can't use a manual. Or even google). They can't remember what they did exactly yesterday. Sometimes they lack all those skills.

I've studied computer science. A co-student (who was working as a educational aid for other students) told me he believed half the students who graduated the 4-year computer science course, could still not program at the end of the 4 years. I thought that must have been bogus. Now I think he was right.

I've worked a few years as a programmer. Writing code for networking equipment. I've met some amazing people. But I've also met people who disappointed me. I had a background running our own network (university campus) and then doing support. So I knew networking. But my programming skills were mediocre (exact language syntax, all the available libraries, using debuggers, etc). In my company there were many "real programmers". People who did know all the languages and tools and debuggers. They were useless. Well, I am exaggerating of course. Some were awesome. But on average, the "real programmers" knew their languages and tools very well. But knew very little about networking. So it took them ages to understand what they were supposed to build. Also, the most important thing when writing real-time code is understanding scaling issues. "Why does my code work with 10 routers in the network, but with 1000 routers, the network melts ?". Most programmers do not think about scaling. Maybe it's not important when you build some standalone utility. But when you build something big, you need to understand what your code is doing. ("Array or linked list ? Linked list or tree ? Would a hashtable work ? What kind of tree ? Etc, etc").

And don't get me started on writing readable (maintainable) code ....

There are many different levels of programming.
With some enthusiasm and a little effort, everybody can learn the basics. And write some small fun programs. Just give it a try. You'll only find out if you enjoy it, and if you're any good, when doing it.

 

[cytg111]

I'm currently taking a computer science course (learning Java at the moment) and I'm failing miserably. I know the basics (how to make classes, basic commands, etc) but I'm struggling to keep up with what's going on.

I do have the Head First Java book that the teacher recommended but until now I have not finished it (read through only the 2nd chapter).

Switching out is not an option since it is my major.

thanks everyone.

Easy, but i grew up with it, so hardly in the same boat.
Looking back at uni there were lots of different arch types in programming 101 and some came from the "other studies" psych/social/whatever, it was ppl who'd never touched a calculater in their life(okay, but you get the picture), and most of them failed miserably while one ot two just had the flair for it.
I've tried to teach this kind (and failed) but one thing they all had in common was this, they got the algorithmics down just fine,- but from from the idea of algos to the actual writing on the wall.... No dice.
Thinking back on it I think its just practise, write the same thing over and over again, until it sticks. A programming language is *alot* to take in from someone "not in the game".

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm gonna be harsh. This basically tells me you are not interested in it. Period. Look elsewhere or pull yourself together now.

This. Sorry, OP.

It's ok if a professional programmer / software developer has a hobby project and no intention to work at a computer once he comes home from work. However in your case you had summer break and did jack shit. If you were interested you would have at least picked one of the exercises you had in class and made a "perfect" implementation of it or even go further and extend it. Or you might have actually started your own project.

I'm self-taught, and I spent every spare moment I could, writing tools, game programming libaries, demo games, all kinds of stuff. Programming, at high level, is about "tools to make tools". The more tools in your bag, the more powerful you become. If you want to be a master Jedi programmer, you need to build a few light sabers along the way.

IMHO reading books is one thing but much, much more important is to actually program. it's a language and languages can't be learned from books but only by "speaking" them. The only thing you can learn from books are general principles but then without an actual example they tend to be very, very abstract (this is were the exercises should help).

Besides this math and programming somehow require the same "skill" or "talent". While most of programming uses very basic math, it still seems to require the same brain areas (eg. "skill"). And last the same is true for music! And no this doesn't mean you need to be a good singer or good at playing instruments (that also has a "mechanical" aspect). If you suck in math (and did not care about the problems) and suck in music it's safe to say you chose the wrong major.

Music and compsci were the only courses I did well in in college. I flunked most of my other ones, due to lack of interest and lack of attendance.

I still got hired months later by a startup. Largely because of my portfolio of self-developed work.

Seriously, OP, my suggestion is to just dive into it. Make up your own project (for me it was various games). Maybe a board game or two. Write some basic code, flesh it out, make it into a game, a fun exercise.

Nothing "hard" like a 3d math engine, until later on. Unless that's what you want to work on.

 

[irishScott]

I can relate.

I started programing by learning Java in high school, took intro to computer science sophomore year and AP Computer Science junior year; and went through much of the same experience. It seemed everyone outpaced me, and just magically knew more than me.

Reality was a lot of those people had been programming in some regard since they were in 6th grade, and I lacked the discipline to catch up. College taught me that I could be at the top of my computer science classes if I redoubled the time I put into learning the stuff. At lest until my Junior year when I had to take an Operating Systems class with a bunch of Computer Science majors (I was Computer Engineering, which is more hardware focused) and they blew me out of the water in more than a few ways. But once again, that's because the time I spent learning about circuits, hardware, and datapaths they spent learning about algorithms, development tools I'd never heard of and abstract mathematical concepts. It's all a matter of how you spend your time, I doubt any of said Computer Science majors even know what a PN Junction is (and they don't really need to).

Judging from what you've posted, if there really is too much going on then something's got to give. Either you have the time to learn to be a good programmer or you don't. As others have said, there are no shortcuts, no mental tricks, no silver bullet solutions. You may or may not have a natural aptitude, but everyone learns the same way: reading and coding until things click. If things aren't clicking, ask the instructor for help and redouble your efforts. If you're behind, tough. You're going to stay behind until you catch up, and there's nothing anyone but you can do about that.

To answer your title, coding IMO is a bitch to learn but gets easier as you do, like many things. In my Junior year of college, I re-took a 100 level computer science course I'd gotten a C in as a freshman, aced it without even trying.

 

[ruhtraeel]

Easy, but i grew up with it, so hardly in the same boat.
Looking back at uni there were lots of different arch types in programming 101 and some came from the "other studies" psych/social/whatever, it was ppl who'd never touched a calculater in their life(okay, but you get the picture), and most of them failed miserably while one ot two just had the flair for it.
I've tried to teach this kind (and failed) but one thing they all had in common was this, they got the algorithmics down just fine,- but from from the idea of algos to the actual writing on the wall.... No dice.
Thinking back on it I think its just practise, write the same thing over and over again, until it sticks. A programming language is *alot* to take in from someone "not in the game".

The only reason I think that you saw the non-computer people understand the algorithms but not how to implement it is because of what everyone said above: Computer Science starts off easy. The logic of making a ball bounce and then stop is easy. If you're purely teaching programming, it's a matter of pure memorization of syntax and stuff.

When you go further into it ("in the game"), the ideas get harder and harder; you end up not programming that much (if at all; a lot of higher level courses require no programming), and you learn about theory (pumping lemma, turing machine, etc) and do proofs.

I personally would never just write the same thing over and over again until it sticks, because I am not a Software Engineer; I am a Computer Science major. Writing the same thing over and over again would teach me how to program well in that language, but I wouldn't learn any of the ideas behind it. IMO if you learn the true ideas behind Computer Science, programming languages all become easy.




All in all, IMO if you are doing Computer Science, try super hard to learn the ideas behind why something works. If you are doing Software Engineering or just programming, repeat the same thing over and over again until it gets drilled into your head.

 

[ibex333]

I'm currently taking a computer science course (learning Java at the moment) and I'm failing miserably. I know the basics (how to make classes, basic commands, etc) but I'm struggling to keep up with what's going on.

I do have the Head First Java book that the teacher recommended but until now I have not finished it (read through only the 2nd chapter).

Switching out is not an option since it is my major.

thanks everyone.

Coding is VERY hard for me. Partially because I dislike it and because I always had crappy math teachers in school who didn't give a damn if I was doing well or not, and just passed me to the next grade with a 65%. I went into programming, because tech support, which I love to do doesn't pay, and networking/server administration still doesn't pay very well, and requires a ton of annoying certifications, after which, snobs still turn away from you because you have no "relevant experience", and even then programming skills are often thrown into the mix as part of the job requirement.

When I just started, I hardly passed my Visual Basic and Java classes, (really should have gotten an F-), but a few things seem to have clicked, which helped me with my "intro to programming" class under a masters program, which used Javascript to introduce programming to people who never programmed before... The professor was a C# developer who recently read a Javascript book so he could teach the class. Needless to say, we were doing Fibonacci, multidimentional arrays, inheritance and recursion in no time, with complete disregard for anyone in the class who didn't understand the material. ; )

I hardly passed with a "B-", but again, something must have clicked along the way, and now I can say, I know Javascript pretty well, up-to above mentioned topics where I become completely lost. Now I am about to take an "Advanced Web and Application Development" class which will do more Javascript and introduce PHP. How in the hell I'm going to pass, I have no friggin' clue, but I did it before, and I'll do it again! And this time I'm aiming for at least a B+.

I think the important thing is not to give up and "keep pluggin' away at it", as my program director likes to say all the time. The phrase "if a horse is dead, - dismount" simply doesn't exist for me. I am not turning back now, when I put in so much time, effort and money into this thing. There is no way back for me. That is a very strong motivator, and should be one for you too, unless you want to struggle paying for your apartment and a car for the rest of your life and settle for bad dates ; )

Also, like a lot of people already said, when you suck in any subject, it is first and foremost, because you didn't put enough time and effort into it, and only after that other reasons/factors come into play. I get really bored reading huge books and doing examples and constantly feel like I need to get up and go do something else. I start checking emails, going on facebook, and before you know it, I'm already playing a game, or even washing dishes, vacuuming the floor or doing pushups - anything to avoid doing more programming!

But lately I have been more successful at forcing myself to read more and program more, and already I am doing MUCH better. Even an hour, goes a very long way! I sat all evening yesterday and wrote very nice code from the book which shows the current date on the website and automatically counts down to new years celebration. It's a beautiful thing to sit there and see how nicely everything works! I feel good knowing I did this!

You CAN do this. Just believe in yourself, and keep pluggin' away at it!

 

[Josh123]

I'll be going back to college on the 26th and I'm a little scared. The last time I was taking classes was about 13 years ago. I took a Fundamentals to Programming class and I couldn't wrap my head around any of it.

I'm currently registered for Computer Science 1 this semester which will have us going over C++. I'm REALLY wanting to get my mind set right and finally finish in hopes to do software development. I'm just hoping now that I'm older I will actually buckle down and actually focus more on school work. :|

 

[Jaydip]

I'll be going back to college on the 26th and I'm a little scared. The last time I was taking classes was about 13 years ago. I took a Fundamentals to Programming class and I couldn't wrap my head around any of it.

I'm currently registered for Computer Science 1 this semester which will have us going over C++. I'm REALLY wanting to get my mind set right and finally finish in hopes to do software development. I'm just hoping now that I'm older I will actually buckle down and actually focus more on school work. :|

Remember if C++ is too hard for you you can always count on C--

 

[Josh123]

Remember if C++ is too hard for you you can always count on C--

 

[EagleKeeper]

Or take C and raise you one

 

[irishScott]

I'll be going back to college on the 26th and I'm a little scared. The last time I was taking classes was about 13 years ago. I took a Fundamentals to Programming class and I couldn't wrap my head around any of it.

I'm currently registered for Computer Science 1 this semester which will have us going over C++. I'm REALLY wanting to get my mind set right and finally finish in hopes to do software development. I'm just hoping now that I'm older I will actually buckle down and actually focus more on school work. :|

http://www.cplusplus.com/
http://stackoverflow.com/

And of course, your friendly AT programming sub-forum.

 

[Josh123]

http://www.cplusplus.com/
http://stackoverflow.com/

And of course, your friendly AT programming sub-forum.

Thanks Irish!

 

[smackababy]

Every time I google some issue I'm having, I end up getting a good laugh at the horribly Engrish posts from stackoverflow. Some of the answers are pretty good though.