Learning to program is a function of interest, need and willpower. It is fun to dabble and be curious, but curiosity will not get you through some of the minut

Learning to program is a function of interest, need and willpower. It is fun to dabble and be curious, but curiosity will not get you through some of the minutia that it takes to build a real app, and thats when need and willpower get you through to learning. One breakthrough for me was realizing that programming is now a social activity. You have to meld with the hivemind to really get anything done, and while its good to have a mental framework of whats under the hood (I recommend the book 'code' by charles petzold for those without formal engineering training) it's more important to realize how to model all the abstractions that are part of modern software. As paradoxial as it sounds, understanding abstractions is often works out to be alot like 'code monkeying' than theoretical computer science.