This image is my reminder of my breakthrough in programming. I know it ain't much for an average programmer, but it's a lot for me.
I started down this path in January and registered for the Harvard CS50 Computer Science using C# and boy I tell ya, if you ever want to feel stupid, just take a course like this! The learning curve in the lessons in contrast to the assignments were huge. It was like someone giving you a French dictionary and asking you to write and essay on thermodynamics. This became so frustrating I couldn't even get past week 2 without finding myself looking for the answers. I don't want to cheat at all, I just want to understand. Even when I understood the logic, I couldn't carry that understanding into the next assignment. 😖
I ended up stopping and took on CS50 using Python as I heard it was beginner friendly - and it was. BUT, again, by week two I found myself stumped, and on this very assignment "Vanity Plates".
I know I'm not that stupid. There has to be a way of understanding this that I'm just not getting.
I was even learning how to use Godot at the same time and had registered into the Great Godot Course consuming every lesson I could.
I learned how to memorize things through memory palaces, and memorized hundreds of functions for Python, hundreds of lines of code in Godot, but nothing was clicking. I repeated assignment s over and over. It's not that the logic didn't make sense, but it's the flow. Like in your native language when you think of saying or writing something, you can somehow conceive how it should be put together and presented before starting. This kind of flow was totally missing.
Then I ran into an Udemy course that was something like over 80 hours. I did about 8 lessons - oh yeah! It was called 100 days of Python or something like that. What was remarkable was the way the course was structured, it was many small assignments with incremental challenges, and after several days, I just got it! Something clicked, and I started understanding coding more intuitively.
So I went back to the CS50 Python course and SOLVED THAT DAMN ASSIGNMENT without needing any help. It was amazing! I felt like I could do anything (until the next assignment...). Then after that I got up to week 6 with relative ease and detoured into Godot again where are started experimenting making little micro games.
This image reminds me of the joy of achievement.
Coding is definitely an emotionally epileptic journey, which really saps your life force, so stuff like this is need as a reminder that hurdles can be jumped.
I might even get it printed and framed.
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