I have been programming for over 40 years, have a PhD in computer science, and I'm comfortable in many languages and in picking up new ones. And yet I can relat

I have been programming for over 40 years, have a PhD in computer science, and I'm comfortable in many languages and in picking up new ones. And yet I can relate to what he wrote. In the 90s, I decided to try and become productive with Microsoft's C++ environment for building GUIs, and it was just a long, long list of seemingly arbitrary steps. Couldn't get it. Or at least not without studying mountains of Microsoft literature to learn lower layers, (COM maybe?), which I wasn't willing to do. I think this guy has two problems. 1) He doesn't know the fundamentals. 2) He doesn't have a project, and so is not directed. Lacking direction, he meanders. With direction, you learn just what you need to do your job. But you learn something and can expand from there. Addressing at least one of those problems might have got him unstuck.