I didn't really get past the 'ineffective fumbling', alas. Got good at BASIC programming on the ZX Spectrum, and read that (I think) Matthew Smith learned Asse

I didn't really get past the 'ineffective fumbling', alas. Got good at BASIC programming on the ZX Spectrum, and read that (I think) Matthew Smith learned Assembly by reading 'Programming the Z80' by Zaks. So I got that for Christmas one year, and got totally drowned by it; had three concerted attempts to understand it, and while I had some idea, it wasn't enough to get going. Decided I was an idiot, and pretty much gave up. Here I am, 30+ years later, spending a couple of years trying to learn programming properly having been made redundant from 2 jobs... I don't think I'm an idiot, but I think it's a combination of others being smarter than me and more attuned to the task in hand, but also there's an element of luck to it. I think if some of the cards fall slightly differently and the things you try happen to work (mostly skill, but with an element of luck), you can get drawn into it, gain some resilience and make progress. If you stumble too much before you make real progress you can think you're stupid and give up. Have a similar parallel experience with playing the guitar (which is how I've mostly earned my living in the intervening years) - an element of picking technique which I didn't manage to work out in the 80s when I was learning and again put it down to my own inability; now with better resources and research in the current era, found out what the 'missing part' of the jigsaw was, and realise that if I had found it (I was close, but no cigar) then things could have been drastically different. Fortunately it happened at a playing level which was already beyond 'give up, you're useless'!