4 ms·

What will you advise to a struggling programming(webdev) student?

I'm currently learning html,css,javascript,bootstrap,react....MERN.. Of course I'm not learning all of them at once. I try to make some vanilla js games, I fail to do so. I try to create websites, I fail to do so. I can make websites but with basic CSS. I've failed to understand bootstrap lol. It's been 2-3 months. I'm a cs graduate. Any advice for me? Can you tell me what I should exactly be doing in my day to day life in order to reach my goal of being a programmer? Is programming learnable or you born with it? I'm hitting up with codewars these days in order to boost my problem solving skills. But again when I go back to board to create vanilla js snake game, I fail to do so.

sgbeal 4y ago
> Is programming learnable or you born with it? FWIW... Programming has been a hobby of mine since Christmas day of 1983, but it literally never occurred to me to go into IT professionally because, for much of my life, i assumed that everyone who works with computers is a proverbial Einstein. In 1995 i rather accidentally ended up at Compaq computers, only to quickly realize that's not the case at all. Some 95% of the company was marketing, sales, infrastructure, and manufacturing, and only a minority of the folks who worked in the software side of things were what i would call "computationally gifted" (and i certainly was not, and still am not, one of them). You don't _have_ to be born with any particular gift for it. Obviously, it helps (i've worked with many people who do have such gifts, and they operate on a whole other level), but most IT skills are things that most of us can pick up over time without any particular inborn knack. The IT field is broad enough that, even if you find that you aren't a Grade A game programmer, you may well find that you are good at scripting automation for DevOps or server administration or some other sub-field you don't yet know exists. Despite having very nearly 40 years of programming behind me, i still consider game programming to be largely beyond my limits. i do relatively well at the library-level of programming, though, and that's where i spend most of my development time (primarily in C, but that is, as they say, an "implementation detail"). Games are _hard_ to program. Low-level data serialization, on the other hand, comes relatively easily to me. i can get by, on a technical level, just fine with CSS, but _completely lack_ the artistic eye needed to make it _look_ good. Explore and find your niche(s). Maybe it's not JS game programming or CSS, but there are thousands of other IT-related skills out there to try out. 0.02€ and all that.
- shivajikobardan 4y ago
  QA, devops, networking and system administration and what other IT careers are there?
  - sgbeal 4y ago
    > ... what other IT careers are there? Security, architecture (as opposed to coding), firmware development, database administration (Oracle is not just a database, it's a full-time (and well-paid) lifestyle choice), 3D modeling, robotics, technical writing, "data science," Scrummaster, _countless_ specializations within every high-level IT field (devops, networking, system administration, etc., etc., etc.), etc., etc., etc... There are thousands of specializations out there and i probably haven't even heard of 90+% of them.
jpoesen 4y ago
tl:dr: contribute to opensource -> learn tech and tools in the real world, forge relationships and expand your network, all while learning. -- One approach is to pick one (or a handful) of opensource projects that use tech you seem interested in, and start contributing in small ways: correcting typos, testing if patch or merge request X does indeed seem to solve problem Y and report back, etc. Many projects tag issues that are well-suited for beginners, and many welcome first-time contributions. Doing this exposes you too a specific set of tools and processes, teaches you collaboration and making things happen, and can create friendship for life. Also, don't dismiss writing about what you learn. Either as a dev journal blog or helping with documentation, writing tutorial-style forces you to be technically correct and unambiguous, and in turn forces you to learn about things at a level of detail you wouldn't otherwise have bothered to research.

sgbeal 4y ago

> Is programming learnable or you born with it? FWIW... Programming has been a hobby of mine since Christmas day of 1983, but it literally never occurred to me to go into IT professionally because, for much of my life, i assumed that everyone who works with computers is a proverbial Einstein. In 1995 i rather accidentally ended up at Compaq computers, only to quickly realize that's not the case at all. Some 95% of the company was marketing, sales, infrastructure, and manufacturing, and only a minority of the folks who worked in the software side of things were what i would call "computationally gifted" (and i certainly was not, and still am not, one of them). You don't _have_ to be born with any particular gift for it. Obviously, it helps (i've worked with many people who do have such gifts, and they operate on a whole other level), but most IT skills are things that most of us can pick up over time without any particular inborn knack. The IT field is broad enough that, even if you find that you aren't a Grade A game programmer, you may well find that you are good at scripting automation for DevOps or server administration or some other sub-field you don't yet know exists. Despite having very nearly 40 years of programming behind me, i still consider game programming to be largely beyond my limits. i do relatively well at the library-level of programming, though, and that's where i spend most of my development time (primarily in C, but that is, as they say, an "implementation detail"). Games are _hard_ to program. Low-level data serialization, on the other hand, comes relatively easily to me. i can get by, on a technical level, just fine with CSS, but _completely lack_ the artistic eye needed to make it _look_ good. Explore and find your niche(s). Maybe it's not JS game programming or CSS, but there are thousands of other IT-related skills out there to try out. 0.02€ and all that.

shivajikobardan 4y ago
QA, devops, networking and system administration and what other IT careers are there?
- sgbeal 4y ago
  > ... what other IT careers are there? Security, architecture (as opposed to coding), firmware development, database administration (Oracle is not just a database, it's a full-time (and well-paid) lifestyle choice), 3D modeling, robotics, technical writing, "data science," Scrummaster, _countless_ specializations within every high-level IT field (devops, networking, system administration, etc., etc., etc.), etc., etc., etc... There are thousands of specializations out there and i probably haven't even heard of 90+% of them.

jpoesen 4y ago

tl:dr: contribute to opensource -> learn tech and tools in the real world, forge relationships and expand your network, all while learning. -- One approach is to pick one (or a handful) of opensource projects that use tech you seem interested in, and start contributing in small ways: correcting typos, testing if patch or merge request X does indeed seem to solve problem Y and report back, etc. Many projects tag issues that are well-suited for beginners, and many welcome first-time contributions. Doing this exposes you too a specific set of tools and processes, teaches you collaboration and making things happen, and can create friendship for life. Also, don't dismiss writing about what you learn. Either as a dev journal blog or helping with documentation, writing tutorial-style forces you to be technically correct and unambiguous, and in turn forces you to learn about things at a level of detail you wouldn't otherwise have bothered to research.