7 ms·

When does learning (to code) stop being so hard?

45 points by tomasien 14y ago

danielwozniak 14y ago
Just keep coding and, as important, read other people's code. Keep doing it. If your coding in python, read the standard library. That, my friend, is one of the beautiful things about open source. One day the coding will be easy and the problems your trying to solve will be hard. Thats a good day IMO.
- tomasien 14y ago
  Absolutely! Great advice. I write code every day, but reading other people's code and seeing how THEY solve the problems probably helps me more than anything.
abhimir 14y ago
Having gone from a non-technical co-founder in my last startup to a technical co-founder in my current startup, I could identify with your post, so much so that it was almost like I had written it myself. Also last few months I have always been frustrated with the slow speed at which I write code as compared to others. And that sometimes makes it hard to enjoy the process when the time difference between when you think of a new feature and when you actually see it working in front of you, is large. But now next time I am feeling frustrated I will think of this blog, grit my teeth and just carry on.
throwit1979 14y ago
Software development, particularly in imperative languages, is as intuitive as it gets. Things like algorithmic complexity analysis, distributed and parallel systems engineering, fault tolerance, cache invalidation and prediction, etc, can become fairly complex. But building a hobbyist project as simplistic as it sounds like the author is building? Easy and intuitive. I'm really getting tired of this "programming is hard" meme. It's not.
- bbotond 14y ago
  Programming is not hard to learn if you can already think rigorously. But most people have no experience expressing their thoughts using strict formalisms and have to learn that separate skill along with programming.
- nlh 14y ago
  I'm sorry for the ad hominim, but this view is extremely myopic. Maybe programming is not hard -- for you. Maybe software development is "as intuitive as it gets" -- for you. But that is an extreme generalization that's simply not fair. Programming is not trivial and something that everyone should by definition be able to intuit. It requires a very specific and logical way of thinking. It requires intellect. It requires practice. I'd venture to guess that a vast majority of people out there couldn't "just figure it out". Programming requires interest, practice, intellect and a very specific way of thinking. It can be taught, it can be learned, and it can even be mastered with enough effort (by some people). But let's not dismiss the hard work of the OP and of the many people out there trying to learn (or, frankly, failing to learn) by calling it intuitive and easy.
  - UnFleshedOne 14y ago
    Maybe "as intuitive as it gets" means "as intuitive as it can be"? There is innate complexity there somewhere. Can't say if we've necessarily reached it though.
- tspike 14y ago
  I too find programming quite intuitive and easy. I also find your post condescending and unproductive. When did you write your first program? At what age did you have unfettered access to a computer? Do you find sports difficult? How about music? Cooking? Every activity worth learning comes more naturally to some than to others, influenced not only by aptitude but by background and learning style.
- jd 14y ago
  Don't forget that many people have trouble understanding something as simple as a variable. You have to learn to execute code in your head to not be completely surprised every time you run the program. Programming really doesn't come naturally to everybody.
tehwebguy 14y ago
For me it was a long progression of specific moments. I remember understanding the DOM for the first time, understanding server side code for the first time, chaining methods, JOINs, scope, regexp, MVC, a lot of individual things. My most practical advice is that you ignore hot new frameworks and languages for now and stick to what you know until you know it much better. But, as soon as you feel comfortable with what you're doing you should take the next step.
jorgeleo 14y ago
Short version: Things stop being hard when I know enough so immediate satisfaction is possible. Then things seem easy. +1 for self awareness progress.
- tomasien 14y ago
  NAILED the tl/dr
  - jorgeleo 14y ago
    Thank you. I think those are very good and important first steps. Keep in mind: 1. We are not scientist. We do not use the scientific method to discover what is already out there. Our creations didn't exist before we write them 2. We are not engineers. Our creations are not bound by what science discovers. In some rare cases they might be a requirement, but never a bind. This is a curse and a blessing 3. We are closer to a mathematician painter. Not because we use math (this is irrelevant for this definition), but because we think in symbolic terms which is the essence of mathematics (btw. this makes arguable that ip over algorithms is like ip over colors) 4. Society is being build on top of it... and "they" are not very aware of it yet
    - Derbasti 14y ago
      This got me thinking (thank you for that): Are we not engineers since our solution space is bounded by the architecture we run on (hardware and software), which in turns has been constructed by engineers who were limited by scientific discovery? By the way, I totally agree with you, but by your definition the above seems like a logical conclusion to me.
      - jorgeleo 14y ago
        Yes, this remind me what one of my teachers used to say: hardware is what you kick when the software does not work. I don't believe that our solution space is limited by the hardware we run it on because our solution can be intended to run in different hardware, and when its adecuate enought it should produce the same results. Lets take math as an example. Lets say the axiom a + b = b + a We know that the expression is true in its essence, regardless the alphabet that we used to expressed. One can argue that ths expression does not makes sense to a chinesse personon because the chinesse alphabet does not have the letters 'a' or 'b'. But we know that if we use valid chinesse letters, then the concept is still true. You see? Is the concept that we express what remains valid, not the symbols that we use to express them. And this allows us to talk about commuting regardless of the language. The symbols are used to communicate an idea that is beyond the meaning of the particular symbol Same thing with software. Software development is not about the computer that it runs on anymore than astronomy is not about a particular telescope. Thus we need to separate the software solution from its implementation environment. The software is not bound by the architecture, a particular implementation is bounded by the hardware architecture and the ability to think out of the box of the developer; but the software it self it isn't (which is why we can do things like calculate the big O, which is hardware independent) Like in math, a particular implementation is just one way to express that software on that hardware using a particular programming language. For a different hardware (chinesse) you will use a different implementation for the same software concept. I cannot address how or why is the logical conclusion for you, but I can tell that it is not for me.
tomasien 14y ago
In case anyone wants details on what I'm doing: I started by learning Javascript and found I could understand the concepts and syntax/logic easily enough to have intelligent conversations about strategy with my cofounders, even enough to help with brain locks they had, but found it a little hard to solve my own problems. After learning Python for a couple of weeks, I found that problem disappeared. With Python, I can just THINK and then write what I'm thinking, which is a huge upgrade for a newbie like me. I'm going to stick with learning design (including JQuery stuff, which I didn't mention but I have already learned and actually implemented to some extent) and Python to attempt to limit the scope of my learning in order to progress faster toward some degree of mastery.
- KirinDave 14y ago
  I think your attitude is amazing, and I wish more people had it. Keep at it! But here is a fair warning: this stuff is hard because it's genuinely tricky. Computers are unforgiving in a way the human mind can never be. So be warned: there are other walls like the one you just vaulted over, and the other side of them is worth reaching. But, it will feel like what you just experienced all over again. One famous wall that my college used to weed out upper and lower division students at UCSB was pointers. Recursion also really shocks some people. Some people get really distracted by the high level modeling that gets used to build systems. Some people have a really hard time learning how to incorporate how the computer actually works into their programming model. I don't mean to discourage you! I mean to say that you are not alone. Many people find this stuff hard and work diligently to learn it throughout their careers. It's a fact often lost due to the culture of dominance and bravado that the computer science world has grown.
  - tomasien 14y ago
    Thanks so much for the words! Everything along the way I struggle with how exactly to implement it in my mental logic model and actually recall it when needed, but once I can do that that individual element becomes much easier. That's how I originally thought of "when will this get easy" until I realized what I meant by easy: when will I just want to do this more than occasionally, when will I ENJOY it. That's when I realized the answer. It will never be "easy" in the sense that learning these new elements will always be difficult in a way, but there will come and already is starting to come a time when I can do it in a way that fulfills me instantly when I'm doing it.
davidddavidson 14y ago
You should fix the links on your blog. All of them except for the HN discussion link have tommy.authpad.com prepended to them.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- tomasien 14y ago
  FIXED thanks!
  - marme 14y ago
    also you are hotlinking some of your images from imgur, this is a big web design no-no. You dont control the host of those images and at some point they will expire leaving broken images on your page, this is best case scenario. The worse case is if the host you are hotlinking finds out what you are doing and changes all the images to some grouse pics to teach you a lesson. imgur is good image host so they would not do that but the problem still is if imgur goes down you can do nothing but twiddle your thumbs until they come back
    - tomasien 14y ago
      Oh I know! Thank you so much for that input. I was really hesitant about posting that link because I don't actually use that site. I'm re-designing it now for what I actually do consulting for (healthcare, hiring, and biz dev for companies that build software and have trouble with sales) That was just quick and dirty
steve918 14y ago
In about 10 years http://norvig.com/21-days.html http://norvig.com/21-days.html
mwexler 14y ago
I do find, however, that we create increasingly complex "frameworks" in the aim of flexibility. We then say how "simple" they are after we learn all the complexity, and use "design patterns" and other heuristics to try to hide just how verbose and complex the frameworks are. Modern GUIs and Web Frameworks (and not just the Java ones that folks like to take potshots at) are great examples of this behavior. I worry that the moment we come up with a simple approach to something (like HTML), we continually add features in the name of "flexibility" until we have an unwieldy mess requiring HTML, CSS, Javascript, a framework, and various middleware pieces to make a site. We make a new library to abstract away the complexity, but the cycle repeats and that library is too complex, so a new library is created on top of it to simplify. I've been programming for years, and I still find pieces hard. And it's almost always the dressing: the fundamental algorithm and approach can be solved, and you think you are done... but having to deal with all the "frameworks" just to make a site or an app becomes an exercise in pain. And those were supposed to be the easy parts, right? I have to admit, I do long for the days of Pilot where I could tell Turtle to just turn left and go, and it would just do it. No windows, no nested frames, no viewports, just describing what I wanted done and the machine does it. (Yes, I know that modern apps, the machine-learning bayesian-based twitter sentiment analyzer that mashes weather forecasts, stock movements and movie ratings, parallelized and built with enterprise-grade user rights management is a far way from drawing a rotating box... but for sake of argument, wouldn't it be nice to just say "do it" every once in a while?)
- creamyhorror 14y ago
  This reasonates with me. I enjoy the process of programming, even though my exposure to it has been relatively limited (a bit of dabbling in school, and an introductory class in college). But this year when I decided to really plunge into the technical side of things with some friends, I found that learning modern web technologies and actually building a Rails site was quite challenging, because it involved a host of things that all needed to be in place. I went through HTML+CSS, jQuery, a bit of AngularJS, customising a few existing javascript packages we were using, then moved on to the backend: Linux, git, Rails, and a whole bunch of Rails gems which I had to read the documentation for and do a good bit of Googling on. There's been a lot of learning Rails and library APIs, finding workarounds for CSS quirks, googling combinations of terms to find out how to achieve something, and asking my experienced partner for help: most of this doesn't quite feel like core "programming". I'm happy when I don't have to wrestle with a totally unhelpful Rails error message for which Google has barely any results for (which I think turned out to be due to some inscrutable setting), or try to evaluate the architectural choices for modeling a set of multi-polymorphic relationships (where the blogposts present models with different capabilities and I don't know enough to tell what will really be useful in future). Maybe I tried to bite off far more than I could chew, I don't know. I guess the trouble is that so much of web development relies on the use of prepackaged tools that the ramp-up learning curve is significantly more challenging than merely learning a single language's vocabulary. As a relative beginner (albeit with prior exposure to programming concepts), it look longer than I expected to get to my current point. Web development isn't just programming, it involves learning a new environment, a whole set of concepts and issues, and a toolbox that just grows and grows and grows...I've started storing my knowledge in a Freemind mindmap just to keep track of it all. I even save my IRC chatlogs whenever I manage to get advice. (If I had a more experienced partner to pair-program with, things would probably go a lot faster, but I'm mostly on my own.) Now I'm looking at websocket libraries and other nodeJS frameworks like DerbyJS and Meteor for new functionality, and it's analysis paralysis all over again. It never ends for a beginner...I miss programming simple stuff.
dasil003 14y ago
I started programming pretty young. AppleSoft BASIC at age 9 or 10. Initially just transcribing programs from hobbyist magazines, but then writing my own programs and branching out into lower and higher-level languages (assembly and HyperTalk). While it definitely had a magnetic attraction to me, I found it difficult to learn (my first internet connection was a few years away, the web even further) and I was always learning by rote. I still remember a distinct moment when I was 20 or so that everything magically clicked into place in my mind. Suddenly I grokked the nature of abstraction and what it meant to translate a mental model into a computer program irrespective of the underlying language. Trying to put it into words always sounds trite, and it's not as if I was magically a better programmer—more like the beginning of a journey, but it was a clear point where I feel like I crossed the steep part of the learning curve, and it was all downhill (at least on the first derivative) from there. I'm not sure if anyone else has ever experienced it this way, I suspect this type of (seemingly) grand epiphany is more likely to happen when you're younger and the brain is more plastic, or maybe I just took too much LSD. In any case, I'm convinced programming belongs to a class of skills (perhaps music is another) that require some higher level foundational concepts that do not occur naturally in most common human experience.
- Derbasti 14y ago
  I had a similar reaction after working through SICP. Suddenly, I gained a new understanding of programming. I knew it would take a lot of time and practice to actually make use of that knowledge. But funny enough, I find your description extremely accurate: I suddenly grokked the nature of abstraction, a beginning of a journey.
  - dasil003 14y ago
    I also was reading SICP for my Scheme class at (or near) that time as well. Fascinating. I'm really sad MIT discontinued its use for the introductory course.
    - Derbasti 14y ago
      Actually, I preferred the video lectures to the book. Still, if I charted all my learning of programming stuff over all time, the time during which I watched SICP will without a doubt be a huge spike in the first derivative.
unoti 14y ago
My dance instructor says that learning to dance goes in three phases that spell MAP: Memorize, Automate, Personalize. First you just memorize the steps and walk through them. Then you get to where you can do the steps without thinking about them. Then you get to where you're able to add some personal flair. For me when learning a new programming language, I find that I move through three important phases. First I'm copying what other people are doing and consulting books and manuals constantly for everything I do. After a while I'm consulting other things I've done myself and imitating those. Then finally I get to where I'm not consulting anything and the code is just flowing, often with my own interesting twists. Incidentally, feeling like it's too hard for you and that you're not smart enough just goes with the territory. Also try to ignore the temptation to feel like it is all very easy for everyone else. I find that the feeling of failure is often its worst right before I make a breakthrough. After about the fifth time of thinking this is too hard for me, I can't do it, then doing it, I realized this is a pattern for me and learned to ignore the feeling of it being too hard.
CodeCube 14y ago
As others have said, there will come a time which is probably unique for everyone, where things will "click". But a friend of mine had some good insight the other day. We were talking about complexity in software and why at times things seem so difficult. He said it's like when you start working out. You can only lift so much weight until your muscles give out. But eventually you keep working at it and increase the amount of weight you are lifting ... so although it will become way easier to lift the amount of weight you were lifting when you started, you will continue working just as hard to lift your current limit. And that's why software will always seem hard, because we build upon our past knowledge and learn to tackle more and more difficult things.
RyanMcGreal 14y ago
Interestingly, I've long thought that Python is like the piano of programming languages. It takes almost no time to learn how to play Three Blind Mice, but an expert user can also play Rachmaninov.
danso 14y ago
How useful is it for adults to start off by making even simple games? Simple games have no practical use beside the learning in itself. Even worse, making a game requires spending attention on entirely orthogonal concepts (such as, what text should greete the user?) when beginners need to focus on the pure code concept. If you're intending to be a tech startup, why don't you code something useful for yourself, like something that turns an excel spreadsheet into HTML tabular data.
- tomasien 14y ago
  The FIRST thing I did was learn to make html/css/jquery pages. I do things like customize blogs, design logos, and make landing pages for fake startups that I think of as exercises. The reason I wrote a simple game is it was an exercise I thought of to do that seemed hard. I did it quickly, correctly, and in my opinion cleverly. It made me happy. For the first time, my technical co-founders also agreed I had written the code the way they would have written it.
- Derbasti 14y ago
  I would recommend project euler. Just some nice mathematical problems that can be solved in polinomial time. It has always served me well to keep some math muscle in active use.
- csense 14y ago
  > Simple games have no practical use beside the learning in itself. I disagree. Games are a great starting point. Creating your own world where the user can immerse themselves and make a variety of choices is way more fun, on a visceral level, than converting Fahrenheit to Celsius or using jQuery to put a few special effects on your website. That fun is part of a reward feedback psychological loop which helps get you motivated, and the motivation helps you study harder and get past frustration. So the positive effect on the learning process may be large enough to justify such an "impractical" application. > games have no practical use Let's not forget that computer/video games are a large, visible and highly successful part of the entertainment industry that essentially didn't exist before the computer era. We could also say that art, music, movies and fiction "have no practical use" -- but a large segment of humanity still finds them compelling enough to spend enormous amounts of time, money and other resources creating and consuming, and these things are widely considered to be a core part of what makes us human. > beginners need to focus on the pure code concept Depends on the person. I would argue that many people learn better when they can apply their learning to a non-trivial problem. This is why introductory university science courses have labs. This is why classes at all levels have large projects in addition to the tiny problems on homework and exams. In fact, an inability to apply your learning to a non-trivial project implies that the learning process is incomplete. > requires spending attention on entirely orthogonal concepts Most projects in the modern world require interfacing multiple languages, libraries and API's. Any web app, for example, will likely have -- at minimum! -- parts in HTML, JS, CSS, database, backend language, and a template engine. That's six orthogonal components. If you're going to be dealing with multiple orthogonal concepts in the "real world" of programming, the "academic world" of programming (whether a formal college curriculum or just self-learning) would be remiss if it didn't give you some preparation for that aspect through exposure to projects involving integrating different technologies. Even single-language projects involving only core libraries often require putting together different API's (for example, many applications can be roughly divided into dealing with files, dealing with a user interface, and internal core functionality.) In fact, not being able to modularize a large problem into manageable pieces that mostly treat other pieces as black boxes is a recipe for failure of any and all attempts at large projects.
orangethirty 14y ago
For me was when I stopped learning inflexible languages. LISP was an eye opener in regard to how flexibility in a language will make things a breeze. I can do anything with it, no need to hammer my ideas into a language. To this day, the only language I enjoy writing is LISP. Its just fun.
- Derbasti 14y ago
  I so wish I could use some LISP at work!
  - orangethirty 14y ago
    We are building a search engine with it (nuuton.com). Shoot me an email. I'm looking for feedback from experienced lispers. :)
    - Derbasti 14y ago
      Ah, well, I wish I was experienced in LISP ;-)
doug1001 14y ago
if it's done right, it's never easy. But it can be and indeed should be fun.

45 points by tomasien 14y ago

Just keep coding and, as important, read other people's code. Keep doing it. If your coding in python, read the standard library. That, my friend, is one of the beautiful things about open source. One day the coding will be easy and the problems your trying to solve will be hard. Thats a good day IMO.

tomasien 14y ago
Absolutely! Great advice. I write code every day, but reading other people's code and seeing how THEY solve the problems probably helps me more than anything.

abhimir 14y ago

Having gone from a non-technical co-founder in my last startup to a technical co-founder in my current startup, I could identify with your post, so much so that it was almost like I had written it myself. Also last few months I have always been frustrated with the slow speed at which I write code as compared to others. And that sometimes makes it hard to enjoy the process when the time difference between when you think of a new feature and when you actually see it working in front of you, is large. But now next time I am feeling frustrated I will think of this blog, grit my teeth and just carry on.

throwit1979 14y ago

Software development, particularly in imperative languages, is as intuitive as it gets. Things like algorithmic complexity analysis, distributed and parallel systems engineering, fault tolerance, cache invalidation and prediction, etc, can become fairly complex. But building a hobbyist project as simplistic as it sounds like the author is building? Easy and intuitive. I'm really getting tired of this "programming is hard" meme. It's not.

bbotond 14y ago
Programming is not hard to learn if you can already think rigorously. But most people have no experience expressing their thoughts using strict formalisms and have to learn that separate skill along with programming.
nlh 14y ago
I'm sorry for the ad hominim, but this view is extremely myopic. Maybe programming is not hard -- for you. Maybe software development is "as intuitive as it gets" -- for you. But that is an extreme generalization that's simply not fair. Programming is not trivial and something that everyone should by definition be able to intuit. It requires a very specific and logical way of thinking. It requires intellect. It requires practice. I'd venture to guess that a vast majority of people out there couldn't "just figure it out". Programming requires interest, practice, intellect and a very specific way of thinking. It can be taught, it can be learned, and it can even be mastered with enough effort (by some people). But let's not dismiss the hard work of the OP and of the many people out there trying to learn (or, frankly, failing to learn) by calling it intuitive and easy.
- UnFleshedOne 14y ago
  Maybe "as intuitive as it gets" means "as intuitive as it can be"? There is innate complexity there somewhere. Can't say if we've necessarily reached it though.
tspike 14y ago
I too find programming quite intuitive and easy. I also find your post condescending and unproductive. When did you write your first program? At what age did you have unfettered access to a computer? Do you find sports difficult? How about music? Cooking? Every activity worth learning comes more naturally to some than to others, influenced not only by aptitude but by background and learning style.
jd 14y ago
Don't forget that many people have trouble understanding something as simple as a variable. You have to learn to execute code in your head to not be completely surprised every time you run the program. Programming really doesn't come naturally to everybody.

tehwebguy 14y ago

For me it was a long progression of specific moments. I remember understanding the DOM for the first time, understanding server side code for the first time, chaining methods, JOINs, scope, regexp, MVC, a lot of individual things. My most practical advice is that you ignore hot new frameworks and languages for now and stick to what you know until you know it much better. But, as soon as you feel comfortable with what you're doing you should take the next step.

jorgeleo 14y ago

Short version: Things stop being hard when I know enough so immediate satisfaction is possible. Then things seem easy. +1 for self awareness progress.

tomasien 14y ago
NAILED the tl/dr
- jorgeleo 14y ago
  Thank you. I think those are very good and important first steps. Keep in mind: 1. We are not scientist. We do not use the scientific method to discover what is already out there. Our creations didn't exist before we write them 2. We are not engineers. Our creations are not bound by what science discovers. In some rare cases they might be a requirement, but never a bind. This is a curse and a blessing 3. We are closer to a mathematician painter. Not because we use math (this is irrelevant for this definition), but because we think in symbolic terms which is the essence of mathematics (btw. this makes arguable that ip over algorithms is like ip over colors) 4. Society is being build on top of it... and "they" are not very aware of it yet
  - Derbasti 14y ago
    This got me thinking (thank you for that): Are we not engineers since our solution space is bounded by the architecture we run on (hardware and software), which in turns has been constructed by engineers who were limited by scientific discovery? By the way, I totally agree with you, but by your definition the above seems like a logical conclusion to me.
    - jorgeleo 14y ago
      Yes, this remind me what one of my teachers used to say: hardware is what you kick when the software does not work. I don't believe that our solution space is limited by the hardware we run it on because our solution can be intended to run in different hardware, and when its adecuate enought it should produce the same results. Lets take math as an example. Lets say the axiom a + b = b + a We know that the expression is true in its essence, regardless the alphabet that we used to expressed. One can argue that ths expression does not makes sense to a chinesse personon because the chinesse alphabet does not have the letters 'a' or 'b'. But we know that if we use valid chinesse letters, then the concept is still true. You see? Is the concept that we express what remains valid, not the symbols that we use to express them. And this allows us to talk about commuting regardless of the language. The symbols are used to communicate an idea that is beyond the meaning of the particular symbol Same thing with software. Software development is not about the computer that it runs on anymore than astronomy is not about a particular telescope. Thus we need to separate the software solution from its implementation environment. The software is not bound by the architecture, a particular implementation is bounded by the hardware architecture and the ability to think out of the box of the developer; but the software it self it isn't (which is why we can do things like calculate the big O, which is hardware independent) Like in math, a particular implementation is just one way to express that software on that hardware using a particular programming language. For a different hardware (chinesse) you will use a different implementation for the same software concept. I cannot address how or why is the logical conclusion for you, but I can tell that it is not for me.

tomasien 14y ago

In case anyone wants details on what I'm doing: I started by learning Javascript and found I could understand the concepts and syntax/logic easily enough to have intelligent conversations about strategy with my cofounders, even enough to help with brain locks they had, but found it a little hard to solve my own problems. After learning Python for a couple of weeks, I found that problem disappeared. With Python, I can just THINK and then write what I'm thinking, which is a huge upgrade for a newbie like me. I'm going to stick with learning design (including JQuery stuff, which I didn't mention but I have already learned and actually implemented to some extent) and Python to attempt to limit the scope of my learning in order to progress faster toward some degree of mastery.

KirinDave 14y ago
I think your attitude is amazing, and I wish more people had it. Keep at it! But here is a fair warning: this stuff is hard because it's genuinely tricky. Computers are unforgiving in a way the human mind can never be. So be warned: there are other walls like the one you just vaulted over, and the other side of them is worth reaching. But, it will feel like what you just experienced all over again. One famous wall that my college used to weed out upper and lower division students at UCSB was pointers. Recursion also really shocks some people. Some people get really distracted by the high level modeling that gets used to build systems. Some people have a really hard time learning how to incorporate how the computer actually works into their programming model. I don't mean to discourage you! I mean to say that you are not alone. Many people find this stuff hard and work diligently to learn it throughout their careers. It's a fact often lost due to the culture of dominance and bravado that the computer science world has grown.
- tomasien 14y ago
  Thanks so much for the words! Everything along the way I struggle with how exactly to implement it in my mental logic model and actually recall it when needed, but once I can do that that individual element becomes much easier. That's how I originally thought of "when will this get easy" until I realized what I meant by easy: when will I just want to do this more than occasionally, when will I ENJOY it. That's when I realized the answer. It will never be "easy" in the sense that learning these new elements will always be difficult in a way, but there will come and already is starting to come a time when I can do it in a way that fulfills me instantly when I'm doing it.

davidddavidson 14y ago

You should fix the links on your blog. All of them except for the HN discussion link have tommy.authpad.com prepended to them.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
tomasien 14y ago
FIXED thanks!
- marme 14y ago
  also you are hotlinking some of your images from imgur, this is a big web design no-no. You dont control the host of those images and at some point they will expire leaving broken images on your page, this is best case scenario. The worse case is if the host you are hotlinking finds out what you are doing and changes all the images to some grouse pics to teach you a lesson. imgur is good image host so they would not do that but the problem still is if imgur goes down you can do nothing but twiddle your thumbs until they come back
  - tomasien 14y ago
    Oh I know! Thank you so much for that input. I was really hesitant about posting that link because I don't actually use that site. I'm re-designing it now for what I actually do consulting for (healthcare, hiring, and biz dev for companies that build software and have trouble with sales) That was just quick and dirty

steve918 14y ago

In about 10 years http://norvig.com/21-days.html http://norvig.com/21-days.html

mwexler 14y ago

I do find, however, that we create increasingly complex "frameworks" in the aim of flexibility. We then say how "simple" they are after we learn all the complexity, and use "design patterns" and other heuristics to try to hide just how verbose and complex the frameworks are. Modern GUIs and Web Frameworks (and not just the Java ones that folks like to take potshots at) are great examples of this behavior. I worry that the moment we come up with a simple approach to something (like HTML), we continually add features in the name of "flexibility" until we have an unwieldy mess requiring HTML, CSS, Javascript, a framework, and various middleware pieces to make a site. We make a new library to abstract away the complexity, but the cycle repeats and that library is too complex, so a new library is created on top of it to simplify. I've been programming for years, and I still find pieces hard. And it's almost always the dressing: the fundamental algorithm and approach can be solved, and you think you are done... but having to deal with all the "frameworks" just to make a site or an app becomes an exercise in pain. And those were supposed to be the easy parts, right? I have to admit, I do long for the days of Pilot where I could tell Turtle to just turn left and go, and it would just do it. No windows, no nested frames, no viewports, just describing what I wanted done and the machine does it. (Yes, I know that modern apps, the machine-learning bayesian-based twitter sentiment analyzer that mashes weather forecasts, stock movements and movie ratings, parallelized and built with enterprise-grade user rights management is a far way from drawing a rotating box... but for sake of argument, wouldn't it be nice to just say "do it" every once in a while?)

creamyhorror 14y ago
This reasonates with me. I enjoy the process of programming, even though my exposure to it has been relatively limited (a bit of dabbling in school, and an introductory class in college). But this year when I decided to really plunge into the technical side of things with some friends, I found that learning modern web technologies and actually building a Rails site was quite challenging, because it involved a host of things that all needed to be in place. I went through HTML+CSS, jQuery, a bit of AngularJS, customising a few existing javascript packages we were using, then moved on to the backend: Linux, git, Rails, and a whole bunch of Rails gems which I had to read the documentation for and do a good bit of Googling on. There's been a lot of learning Rails and library APIs, finding workarounds for CSS quirks, googling combinations of terms to find out how to achieve something, and asking my experienced partner for help: most of this doesn't quite feel like core "programming". I'm happy when I don't have to wrestle with a totally unhelpful Rails error message for which Google has barely any results for (which I think turned out to be due to some inscrutable setting), or try to evaluate the architectural choices for modeling a set of multi-polymorphic relationships (where the blogposts present models with different capabilities and I don't know enough to tell what will really be useful in future). Maybe I tried to bite off far more than I could chew, I don't know. I guess the trouble is that so much of web development relies on the use of prepackaged tools that the ramp-up learning curve is significantly more challenging than merely learning a single language's vocabulary. As a relative beginner (albeit with prior exposure to programming concepts), it look longer than I expected to get to my current point. Web development isn't just programming, it involves learning a new environment, a whole set of concepts and issues, and a toolbox that just grows and grows and grows...I've started storing my knowledge in a Freemind mindmap just to keep track of it all. I even save my IRC chatlogs whenever I manage to get advice. (If I had a more experienced partner to pair-program with, things would probably go a lot faster, but I'm mostly on my own.) Now I'm looking at websocket libraries and other nodeJS frameworks like DerbyJS and Meteor for new functionality, and it's analysis paralysis all over again. It never ends for a beginner...I miss programming simple stuff.

dasil003 14y ago

I started programming pretty young. AppleSoft BASIC at age 9 or 10. Initially just transcribing programs from hobbyist magazines, but then writing my own programs and branching out into lower and higher-level languages (assembly and HyperTalk). While it definitely had a magnetic attraction to me, I found it difficult to learn (my first internet connection was a few years away, the web even further) and I was always learning by rote. I still remember a distinct moment when I was 20 or so that everything magically clicked into place in my mind. Suddenly I grokked the nature of abstraction and what it meant to translate a mental model into a computer program irrespective of the underlying language. Trying to put it into words always sounds trite, and it's not as if I was magically a better programmer—more like the beginning of a journey, but it was a clear point where I feel like I crossed the steep part of the learning curve, and it was all downhill (at least on the first derivative) from there. I'm not sure if anyone else has ever experienced it this way, I suspect this type of (seemingly) grand epiphany is more likely to happen when you're younger and the brain is more plastic, or maybe I just took too much LSD. In any case, I'm convinced programming belongs to a class of skills (perhaps music is another) that require some higher level foundational concepts that do not occur naturally in most common human experience.

Derbasti 14y ago
I had a similar reaction after working through SICP. Suddenly, I gained a new understanding of programming. I knew it would take a lot of time and practice to actually make use of that knowledge. But funny enough, I find your description extremely accurate: I suddenly grokked the nature of abstraction, a beginning of a journey.
- dasil003 14y ago
  I also was reading SICP for my Scheme class at (or near) that time as well. Fascinating. I'm really sad MIT discontinued its use for the introductory course.
  - Derbasti 14y ago
    Actually, I preferred the video lectures to the book. Still, if I charted all my learning of programming stuff over all time, the time during which I watched SICP will without a doubt be a huge spike in the first derivative.

unoti 14y ago

My dance instructor says that learning to dance goes in three phases that spell MAP: Memorize, Automate, Personalize. First you just memorize the steps and walk through them. Then you get to where you can do the steps without thinking about them. Then you get to where you're able to add some personal flair. For me when learning a new programming language, I find that I move through three important phases. First I'm copying what other people are doing and consulting books and manuals constantly for everything I do. After a while I'm consulting other things I've done myself and imitating those. Then finally I get to where I'm not consulting anything and the code is just flowing, often with my own interesting twists. Incidentally, feeling like it's too hard for you and that you're not smart enough just goes with the territory. Also try to ignore the temptation to feel like it is all very easy for everyone else. I find that the feeling of failure is often its worst right before I make a breakthrough. After about the fifth time of thinking this is too hard for me, I can't do it, then doing it, I realized this is a pattern for me and learned to ignore the feeling of it being too hard.

CodeCube 14y ago

As others have said, there will come a time which is probably unique for everyone, where things will "click". But a friend of mine had some good insight the other day. We were talking about complexity in software and why at times things seem so difficult. He said it's like when you start working out. You can only lift so much weight until your muscles give out. But eventually you keep working at it and increase the amount of weight you are lifting ... so although it will become way easier to lift the amount of weight you were lifting when you started, you will continue working just as hard to lift your current limit. And that's why software will always seem hard, because we build upon our past knowledge and learn to tackle more and more difficult things.

RyanMcGreal 14y ago

Interestingly, I've long thought that Python is like the piano of programming languages. It takes almost no time to learn how to play Three Blind Mice, but an expert user can also play Rachmaninov.

danso 14y ago

How useful is it for adults to start off by making even simple games? Simple games have no practical use beside the learning in itself. Even worse, making a game requires spending attention on entirely orthogonal concepts (such as, what text should greete the user?) when beginners need to focus on the pure code concept. If you're intending to be a tech startup, why don't you code something useful for yourself, like something that turns an excel spreadsheet into HTML tabular data.

tomasien 14y ago
The FIRST thing I did was learn to make html/css/jquery pages. I do things like customize blogs, design logos, and make landing pages for fake startups that I think of as exercises. The reason I wrote a simple game is it was an exercise I thought of to do that seemed hard. I did it quickly, correctly, and in my opinion cleverly. It made me happy. For the first time, my technical co-founders also agreed I had written the code the way they would have written it.
Derbasti 14y ago
I would recommend project euler. Just some nice mathematical problems that can be solved in polinomial time. It has always served me well to keep some math muscle in active use.
csense 14y ago
> Simple games have no practical use beside the learning in itself. I disagree. Games are a great starting point. Creating your own world where the user can immerse themselves and make a variety of choices is way more fun, on a visceral level, than converting Fahrenheit to Celsius or using jQuery to put a few special effects on your website. That fun is part of a reward feedback psychological loop which helps get you motivated, and the motivation helps you study harder and get past frustration. So the positive effect on the learning process may be large enough to justify such an "impractical" application. > games have no practical use Let's not forget that computer/video games are a large, visible and highly successful part of the entertainment industry that essentially didn't exist before the computer era. We could also say that art, music, movies and fiction "have no practical use" -- but a large segment of humanity still finds them compelling enough to spend enormous amounts of time, money and other resources creating and consuming, and these things are widely considered to be a core part of what makes us human. > beginners need to focus on the pure code concept Depends on the person. I would argue that many people learn better when they can apply their learning to a non-trivial problem. This is why introductory university science courses have labs. This is why classes at all levels have large projects in addition to the tiny problems on homework and exams. In fact, an inability to apply your learning to a non-trivial project implies that the learning process is incomplete. > requires spending attention on entirely orthogonal concepts Most projects in the modern world require interfacing multiple languages, libraries and API's. Any web app, for example, will likely have -- at minimum! -- parts in HTML, JS, CSS, database, backend language, and a template engine. That's six orthogonal components. If you're going to be dealing with multiple orthogonal concepts in the "real world" of programming, the "academic world" of programming (whether a formal college curriculum or just self-learning) would be remiss if it didn't give you some preparation for that aspect through exposure to projects involving integrating different technologies. Even single-language projects involving only core libraries often require putting together different API's (for example, many applications can be roughly divided into dealing with files, dealing with a user interface, and internal core functionality.) In fact, not being able to modularize a large problem into manageable pieces that mostly treat other pieces as black boxes is a recipe for failure of any and all attempts at large projects.

orangethirty 14y ago

For me was when I stopped learning inflexible languages. LISP was an eye opener in regard to how flexibility in a language will make things a breeze. I can do anything with it, no need to hammer my ideas into a language. To this day, the only language I enjoy writing is LISP. Its just fun.

Derbasti 14y ago
I so wish I could use some LISP at work!
- orangethirty 14y ago
  We are building a search engine with it (nuuton.com). Shoot me an email. I'm looking for feedback from experienced lispers. :)
  - Derbasti 14y ago
    Ah, well, I wish I was experienced in LISP ;-)

doug1001 14y ago

if it's done right, it's never easy. But it can be and indeed should be fun.