Why You STRUGGLE to Learn to Code

i've found that one of the most humbling experiences you can have when you're learning to code on your own so without a school or a boot camp is when you hit that first get real moment i call it a get real moment where you are maybe trying to build some application you're trying to learn something it's just not working you're struggling maybe this has been like two or three days in a row or longer and you begin to realize you're like this goal that i had of becoming a programmer in the very beginning i thought it was gonna be pretty easy maybe i just read a few books or build a few simple applications and you realize that it's not as easy as you thought it was going to be and you really start to realize that there's a lot of struggling involved in learning the code to the point where you can get to be a software developer so in this video i wanted to talk about why you struggle to learn to code because i've worked with many different people on this i talk to people all the time and i see pretty consistent things that people do wrong or things that they do that make the process a lot more difficult and i wanted to dive in and talk about that and give you some strategies to make the process easier at least as much as you possibly can now i want to make it abundantly clear here that there will be struggling it's sort of inevitable as you're learning to code because becoming a software developer requires a pretty refined skill set it's not easy to do it takes a long time it takes a lot of practice so there's going to be struggling i'd say if you're not struggling at all that's actually a sign for concern because i'd say you're not pushing yourself hard enough you're not pushing yourself to build applications that really challenge your skill set so there's going to be struggling but we don't want you to struggle so much that you build up a lot of anxiety and stress around the idea of coding because when that happens then you're not going to want to code and you're going to avoid the activity you're eventually going to quit because it's just going to be too much for you to bear so let's just get that out of the way first of all now whenever i see somebody who's really struggling with this there are three things that come to mind that they could probably improve the first thing that they often can improve is their own personal management specifically relating to how they schedule their time so the most important thing i think anyone needs to know about learning to code successfully to the point where they can get a job is that it's all about consistency like showing up every single day putting in time and also doing that over a long enough period of time not just days not just weeks but months and years and if you want to be really really good at this then show up for years and years pretty consistently there's no other way around it there's no shortcuts to that you have to put the time in and you have to be consistent and there's two types of people who i've seen who try to become programmers person one the person who struggles is they wake up every single day and they think to themselves hopefully i'll get an hour in today hopefully i'll get in two hours today hopefully i'll get in three hours of studying today i'll try to figure out when there's some opening in my schedule and that person usually struggles to find the time because life comes at you fast you have to be disciplined you have to have a lot of willpower to figure out when you're going to do it whereas person number two is a person who schedules their time in so maybe the day before they figure okay i'm going to study from 11 a.m to noon 11 a.m to 1 p.m because i can see that i have a break in my schedule there for it or even better maybe they've created a ritual every week around certain times where they know they're gonna study so maybe they say every day before work from six a.m to seven a.m i'm going to study for one hour after dinner like 6 p.m to 7 p.m maybe that's another time when they're going to study the more that you can get this scheduling down where you can have your personal management be on point the more likely you're going to be doing this for a long period of time so the ability to manage yourself and schedule your time really creates what is called a compound effect where all these little actions taken over a long enough period of time produce a large breakthrough and eventually you get to the point where you're a lot better at this all right now before we proceed any further i just have to say if you have enjoyed this video so far it's required that you go down and smash the like button we can't move forward until you do that also if you're not subscribed to my channel definitely go down there and hit the subscribe button make sure to hit the bell icon so you get notifications anytime i put out a new video alright now let's proceed the second thing that i've seen really increase people's struggles is when they lack a clear plan so many times people learn from a friend they're like hey you could be a software developer you can teach yourself to do this you don't have to go to school they get really excited they go out and buy like four or five books a couple of courses a couple tutorials and then that's the extent of their plan but they never really thought to themselves hey what are the exact steps i need to take that will lead me to actually start applying to jobs is it just going to be reading all these books that i have and watching the tutorials and that's great but usually it needs to go beyond that and one of the things i've said in previous videos is that you want to build as many projects as you possibly can you want to build a portfolio i'd say a minimum of four projects maybe you want to aim more for 8 10 12 something in that range there's no shortage of ideas of projects on the internet so you have no excuse there but it's really good to sit down and write out not just think in your head but to actually write out and talk about a plan and say here's you know the five projects i'm going to build here's the progression of the projects and here's the key so for those of you who are really nervous about doing this because you think you're going to make the wrong plan a terrible plan is 1 000 times better than no plan because even a terrible plan you can improve over time and it can change so just get a plan out there what you can do is once you have a plan say hey i'm going to build these five projects here's the programming languages i'm going to learn then you can go and get what's called feedback you can get feedback from any maybe friends who are software developers if you go to a meetup maybe you can give it to them they can suggest things maybe you can post on a forum maybe you can go to my free facebook group and ask for feedback there but the thing is if you just get a plan out you can always tweak that it doesn't have to be perfect mine certainly wasn't i tweaked it a lot over time so get yourself a plan because the plan will give you structure and will also let you know what steps you need to take next the third thing that i've seen that really increases struggling is a lack of what i call progress points so let's say you're on a long journey on a long road trip like a 30 hour road trip one of the things that makes the road trip bearable is you can see out the windows and see certain landmarks so you can know how far away you are from the destination if somebody blindfolded you while you were in that road trip you may get driven crazy by the fact that you don't know where exactly you are because you can't see all these landmarks well the same thing happens when you're learning to code if you haven't given yourself a road map that's going to spell sort of what you need to do to get the point where you can start applying for jobs then you may be halfway through working your butt off but you don't know how much farther you have to go and that drives people nuts so what i found is that many people who get very far into this start to really struggle with their motivation because they don't know how much farther they have to go and even worse they don't have anything to look back on and to see how far they've come and this is one of the biggest problems i have when i work with people is that they've made a ton of progress they've done really well in the short period of time that i work with them but they get hung up on something they get stuck on this little concept that they don't know and they say wow i'm an idiot i can't figure this out i'll never do it and i have to remind them like look at how much progress you've made you can actually see all the projects you built all the things you've learned so it gives you that motivation to keep going but more than that you can also see how much farther you have to go so it's so important for your own psychology to create some sort of progress points what i call landmarks so you can see how far you've come and how far you have to go and honestly that just comes from creating that plan for you that i talked about in the last step so make sure not to skip that create the plan for yourself even if it's imperfect so really those are the main ways i found that people make this process a lot harder than it has to be i hope that this video has helped if it has definitely go down and smash the like button also leave me a comment let me know what you think and other than that if you haven't joined my free facebook group already definitely do that as well i'll leave a link in the description below other than that thank you so much for watching and as always peace out everybody

Channel: Andy Sterkowitz

Views: 49,647

Keywords: is programming difficult to learn, programming, learn programming, how to learn programming, how to learn to code, programming for beginners, self-taught programmer, self-taught software developer, andy sterkowitz, andrew sterkowitz, coding, web developer, code, developer, programmer, software development, get a programming job, learn to program, computer programming

Id: jBgeBgEEoFs

Length: 7min 35sec (455 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021