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For me, I feel as though you need to have a vast amount of knowledge in order to code anything useful or significant. You can't just learn a language -- you nee
by 1npo 10y ago
For me, I feel as though you need to have a vast amount of knowledge in order to code anything useful or significant. You can't just learn a language -- you need to learn a library, or two, or ten in order to finish a project. I often find myself overwhelmed by the amount of information I need to take in and process in order to complete a small task.
I've found myself looking to smaller and simpler languages and operating systems in order to get around this, but it doesn't seem to help. Whether it's Python on Linux or C in Plan9, it's the same problem for me.
This is probably a bad example, since it could be implemented in a simpler way on a different system, but it illustrates my point. I wanted to write a small instant messenger in Plan9. The most efficient way to do it is to use 9p, have the clients mount a name space, and just read/write to a file. I have to learn how to use 9p, which has a ton of data structures and functions, most of which require other knowledge about the system. I have to learn the draw library, which is also full of the same sort of things. More often than not, trying to learn how to use a library demands further research in to other things in order to understand what's happening.
All in all I feel like I'm being overloaded. The amount of learning I have to do greatly outweighs my desire to persist until I can produce anything valuable.
- WWLink 10y agoThe effective way to learn those things (especially with the larger library languages) involves copious use of search engines and ctrl-f in books/manuals, lol. Some things you'll repeat enough that you know it by heart. Other things might be really basic, but you'll still have to google it from time to time. What does come nicely with time is you start to build up a mental model of "hrmm, I want to do this, but I need an XYZ. I know in ObjC I used XYZ, does Scala have that? Oh neat it has something similar!"
- RUG3Y 10y agoThis is the only way I've learned anything...repeating a few things until I can't forget them. I'm by no means a brilliant programmer, but you can do a surprising amount of things using a few simple concepts.
- kup0 10y agoHaving to learn libraries has definitely been the roadblock for me. I understand the "basics" that most of the tutorials and things I've used so far tend to cover (loops, data structures, etc.) but that always seems to be as far as I get before it feels overwhelming to try to learn libraries. So many tutorials and learning materials/examples use libraries, but they often never really cover how to learn these thoroughly or provide any methodology for doing so. It's always just thrown in so they can show you a code example. Maybe reading library documentation is the only way, but I feel like from a learning perspective if someone could crack the library-learning process and make it easier or more welcoming that it wouldn't feel like such a brick wall. I'm not sure if the problem is the learning materials or me, to be honest. I really should just dig into a standard (or other) library and try to learn it back-to-front I suppose and see if that tough process (that I always seem to quit...) pays off.