braaaains

[spacebug]

Most of the time, learning new stuff is fun and exciting. But then there are the times that it goes so slowly, and it feels like my brain isn't letting anything in (or if it lets something in then it goes right back out again), and then I feel stupid even though I know I'm not. Maybe it's just a problem of impatience- I want to do cool and complicated things right now, but in order to do cool and complicated things, you have to know how to do simple and relatively boring things first. I find myself wishing I hadn't dropped the beginning programming class I took when I was in PSEO, but... then it actually went much too slowly and I got bored, and I was 16 and couldn't think ahead to how I might build on it to do things I was actually interested in. There were also far too many boring filmstrips and lectures about the history of old mainframes (Yes, it's the ENIAC, again... can we do stuff now?) Mostly I wanted to be able to converse more intelligently with older computer nerds I was befriending. That's an interesting form of peer pressure... Learn to code! All the nerd kids are doing it!
MAX isn't really coding, but it's close. It's an interesting reminder of how I learn the most quickly, and that I do usually genuinely enjoy troubleshooting, so long as I feel like I'm making some kind of progress.

Comments

[lokey.livejournal.com]

I know the feeling. I'm finding myself looking at learning to program several different kinds of systems, and starting to try and pick up Visual Basic and C#. I get frustrated though with, "Hello World" and the like. I took a coding class back at the U and ended up failing it after I stopped going because it was just getting too tedious. I spent more time playing TA and helping all of the people around me than actually learning and doing anything.

All of that said I'm certain you'll pick it up pretty quickly. Try not to be overtaken by your frustration and trust in yourself that you'll be doing some seriously cool shit very soon.

[bitwise.livejournal.com]

If you like troubleshooting, you'll be good at programming.