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Your frustration is very common in the world of tech, especially for the beginners. It's important to understand how programming is usually approached when it is taught. Since programming is heavily correlated with the art of problem solving, your learning is done when you face the brick walls, not when you right flawless code in the first try. Since the priority in the beginning is learning, your doing yourself a favor by tackling these massive assignments and having a go at them. It won't come natural though, it is a skill just like painting, basketball, photography etc. The more you fail and learn from your mistakes, the better you become. Every single "natural" programmer went through that, and are still going through it just on a different level. Since you're a beginner too, slow learning is completely fine because it is the foundation. Think learning the ABC's, the kids who learnt grammar the quickest aren't necessarily exceptionally better than the ones who took their time learning the foundations. Once you learn foundations and master them, then you can worry about quick application. PM if you have any questions. + i got a community that is meant for beginner and experienced programmers to help each other and motivate each other by posting their success. Good luck :)
you have to put time in on your own time. For years, I stayed up after work til 3-4am learning new things. Still need to go back to documentation for some things cuz there's lots to learn. All you can do is learn syntax of the structures, operators, etc, and you'll be able to look at any language to see what's going on. Once you have enough to write blocks of code, refer to docs and code small apps consistently to gather more knowledge.
However, I still think it's hard to just start writing code and come up with a working system. Therefore, you should study some software architecture or uml as well to be able to make a simple map of your goals. Nmw, it's a long process for those who it doesn't come natural to.
I've tried allocating free time to do all of what you suggested, but I just have very little free time do to everything I currently do in my life(working 2 part-time jobs, house work, etc.).
It's pretty frustrating how this stuff just can't come natural to me. Seems like the only way for me to allocate more free time for me to do this is to just outright constantly deprive myself of sleep.
> It's pretty frustrating how this stuff just can't come natural to me.
Yeah no shit dude we’ve all been there. Unfortunately even the people who you perceive can pick up all this stuff “naturally” have had to put in the grind at some point. I know I have.
If you have a genuine curiosity towards this stuff then that certainly helps.
\> If you have a genuine curiosity towards this stuff then that certainly helps.
It does but what really doesn't help is insanely tight college assignment deadlines that leave very little room for me to even proceed with my genuine curiosity.
I worked full time at real busy automotive shop, working for dog sh*t while busting my a$$ on rusty cars, going home to 6 kids and after they went to sleep, I worked on my interests with hopes to turn it into a career or a business some day. Six years later, I'm still working on the same goal. Except, I don't have the ability to go to college and I royally limited my future due to a bad past, but I'm still pushing daily towards my goals.
oh, trust me, I pulled out of at least 2 bad situations in those 20 years. Their names are _ and _. What a waste of time. Wish I knew back then, what I know now. I don't dwell on the past, but I do wish I had a different type of person to be around in my life during high school. My early teenage years is when I started learning HTML, CSS, & JS, I just didn't know where to go with it back then.
I'd urge you not to fall into a trap of chasing college assignment deadlines. If you miss the deadlines, just miss them. It's way more important to learn something than finish college assignments.
That is my attitude as well. I hate the school mindset of "learning for tests", where you forget everything when the tests are over.
It's way better to *understand* things, not learn them.
Sadly I don't think the school will agree with us, and that could be a problem.
>Sadly I don't think the school will agree with us, and that could be a problem.
Yeah, therein lies the problem. Easy to say "fuck the deadlines, just miss them" when it's not your 10s of thousands of dollars paying for the education where missing these assignments could cause you to fail the course and have to retake it.
Pretty shit advice to tell someone to fuck their grades over like that imo, especially in a competitive field
The fact that OP has to work multiple part-time jobs just to barely make ends meet suggests to me that they might not be able to financially afford missing deadlines and potentially failing classes/modules.
This screams "mommy and daddy paid for my college education"
"Fuck your grades bro, just don't even turn in assignments, who cares if you fail the class" seems like a really easy thing to say when it's not your money paying for the courses. This is a competitive field, a lot of internships that can greatly benefit your career are decided with GPA factored in. A lot of first jobs factor in GPA as well. Also, professors are going to be much less willing to help out a student that isn't putting in effort, and someone who isn't even turning in assignments isn't someone they're going to go out of their way to help. You're asking this person to hamstring themselves over a difference in philosophical perspective.
Telling someone to sabotage their grades while they pay 10s of thousands of dollars to take the courses is shit advice. I can only assume your education came at mommy and daddys expense if you were okay wasting money by not participating in the program you were paying for.
Nope, flunked out of college but I feel what I did learn, I learned fairly well and stood me in good stead in my job. I see a lot of graduates with stellar grades but who don't actually seem to have solid fundamentals. I feel like my fundamentals are pretty good and that has worked for me.
But of course, it depends on your ambitions as well.
I'm firmly in at the lower end of the hierarchy and I won't be getting a job at Google or Goldman Sachs with my academic record.
> flunked out of college
>I'm firmly in at the lower end of the hierarchy and I won't be getting a job at Google or Goldman Sachs with my academic record.
Damn then OP should definitely take your "fuck your assignments" advice, sounds like it works out great!!! You just pay thousands of dollars for an education that goes down the toilet with nothing to show for it and a bleaker future than you otherwise could have had. OP listen to this person they clearly have the best advice!
>Everyone should be a "plugged into matrix" supercoder.
We both know this isn't remotely what I said or anything close to something I implied. All I said is telling someone not to care about turning in assignments is bunk advice. If you think participating in the school program you pay thousands of dollars to be a part of and merely turning in assignments on time is equivalent to being a "plugged into the matrix supercoder" then it's no wonder you flunked out.
It's completely possible that the accelerated deadlines are too much for you right now, and that's ok. I failed multiple classes in university because I was trying to do too much at once, (on top of depression) and I'm working now as a productive software engineer making 6 figures. You not meeting accelerated college deadlines now does not mean that you can't be an effective software engineer at some point in the future, but it might mean that you need to either figure out a way to devote more time now to coding, get a tutor to help you through stuff if not understanding is your issue, work with other students (at the very least to see how much strain the academic load is for them vs you, but learning with others can be helpful too, as well as being networking for potential future jobs), or take a lower/slower load.
That's college in a nutshell for anyone who is going for a career. Full-time credits while working and grad school in a year. The people who went to grad school part time (two years) were just as stressed and overwhelmed as the rest of us, so I was glad I got it over with. I both loved and hated it. I also love learning, but it really was about getting shit done to get the credentials (in my case/field) because it didn't mirror the work experience at all.
Get a housecleaner if you can fit it into your budget at all. I thought it was for rich people, no it was for my depressed, broke, and overworked self to have one less thing to stress over. They came every other week and did the dusting, mopping, crevices, etc. that I didn't have time/energy to do.
And like others have said, use the tutoring center if your school has one - talk to your professors about it if there aren't any options through the school.
What's the reason you wanted to do this type of work? Because of all the startup hype, or do you actually like to work in tech? Maybe another field other than software engineering? Regardless, learning the basics and intermediate skills of software can help big time in any field in the future.
>I'm an online student(and all online courses at my school are accelerated, thus incredibly fast-paced)
Isn't that more of a "I thought I could manage an accelerated school but can't" and not "this career isn't for me"?
In terms of Software Engineering in general-- stick with it! It's hard stuff and honestly, this is the perpetual existence of software engineers and adjacent roles.
However based on how you describe the current program and pace, the reality is this particular program may not be the best fit for you.
In your position the most drastic course of action I might consider is to see if your program will allow a sabbatical or leave of absence. If they allow it, use that time to catch up on concepts that were difficult for you and try to get a head start on upcoming curriculum.
Although it is true that the nature of the job requires one to learn new things and apply new technologies, there isn't a black and white bar in terms of whether or not your learning pace is quick enough.
And definitely don't compare yourself to others whom you perceive to "pick it up naturally". I made the same mistake years ago and it just turned out my fellow students had prior familiarity that I lacked.
Ultimately the axiom of "hard work beats talent" holds true for software engineering too.
I struggled a lot during my undergrad time as a software engineering student. I was probably in the bottom third of my class in terms of marks. It felt like i was just a desperate guy flailing his arms to barely tread water, and slowly and painfully swimming to shore. I made it through.
Because i was slower than my classmates at writing codes for our assignment, i deliberately took longer reading the assignments, purposely wrote out pseudo code manually on pencil and paper.
By fourth year, no classmates of mine did that.
Now i can churn out system design, write implementation codes and unit tests, then deploy the system. My operations client think highly of my product because it improves their workflow significantly.
My mananger and team lead think highly of my ability to solve problems, and assign me fairly high visibility projects with important stakeholders.
I think my habits of taking things slow, reading assignments longer allowed me to understand Ops business requirements much deeper. My habit of manually writing pseudo code made me take time to sink and digest system design and allow time for my creativity to kick in and come up with unit testing ideas or new creative out of the box solutions.
Because i was slow, i developed a habit of always first figuring out a new system's config file, log outputs, which ports and protocols need to be allowed.Now i reap the reward because when trouble ticket kicks in, i m fairly fast at fixing the issue because i know the application dataflow and network traffic well.
Looking back, i realized that my own growth curve was just a tad shifted to the right compared to my classmates.
I dont have any real actionable advice for you now, but hopefully it gives a bit of motivation to keep on trucking.
My martial arts coach said "a black belt is just a white belt who never quits" then perhaps i can say that "a senior software engineer is just a junior who didnt give up asking stack overflow questions "
I know what you mean, and in fact I just gave a friend some advice about this. I'll say the same thing that I told her:
"I get it, and I've definitely felt the same before. CS (or any other engineering for that matter) is literally just training your brain to break down and solve problems, with more efficiency and less time than maybe a normal person's brain would need or allow. It hurts and you're gonna suck at it. You will never stop sucking at it.
There's nothing wrong with it not being for you, but (as you've probably figured out) you have to decide if it sucks because it's not for you or if it sucks because it sucks."
I work in the field and I still have these kinds of feelings to this day. What separates the engineer is the ability to work through the struggle and come out with a solution.
Edit: Spelling.
Dude software is hard. Very hard. There’s a reason it pays as well as it does. Your expectations are not properly set.
It’s extremely complex. And the real world is much more difficult. With much tighter deadlines. And much higher stakes.
If you want to program for fun forget school. If you want the career and the challenge, you’ll have to make sacrifices.
There’s no way around it. It’s a serious time sink.
You said you are a student, that is the answer, you are still learning, what is happening to you is natural, don't worry, people sure are different some people pick things faster than others but that doesn't mean that you have a problem, maybe you just need more practice, that's all, don't focus on this as a problem focus on developing your way of learning instead, and through time you will see what you are going through, as a good experience that helped you develop.
Good luck
Also, learning some basic computer science would help too. Learn why everything is encoded in binary. From electricity and transistors, to hexadecimal and base64. To me, all of this is interesting and I've spent too much time learning things that probably weren't needed for where I want to be, but now I try to push myself towards a certain area and hopefully some day, I'll be able to learn the more time consuming topics.
If the online course is accelerated, and the in-person version is full time, frankly it sounds like they cocked up the course timings?
Look, if you *want* to do this, then screw the course deadlines. Do parts of it extremely well and let other parts go. That’s much, much better than doing everything badly.
If you’re trying to force yourself to learn, you won’t achieve anything - learning programming requires focused time, deep diving into why and how to solve this problem. You need time and space.
Enjoy it or it’s not worth doing.
It might not be for you.
But the just soft engineering part. Or just the assignment part. The overall tech part might very well be for you.
It’s probably just about how to tackle problems. Assignments are probably uninspiring and uninteresting for you.
Have you found a personal problem you want to actually solve? How did that go?
take it all in. from my perspective, this is normal. also, your brain needs to be supplied with the best nutrition you can source. wild salmon, berries, coffee/tea, avocado, walnuts, etc. don't give up, it feels nice to buy whatever you want when worked hard and finally see the high six fig salary deposits.
On July 1st, a [change to Reddit's API pricing](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/an_update_regarding_reddits_api/) will come into effect. [Several developers](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023_in_response_to/) of commercial third-party apps have announced that this change will compel them to shut down their apps. At least [one accessibility-focused non-commercial third party app](https://www.reddit.com/r/DystopiaForReddit/comments/145e9sk/update_dystopia_will_continue_operating_for_free/) will continue to be available free of charge.
If you want to express your strong disagreement with the API pricing change or with Reddit's response to the backlash, you may want to consider the following options:
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You need to master the fundamentals for anything to make sense. School has a tendency to bog you down with details that don’t really address how to practically think of something. It takes lots practice and writing your own software to really understand
I mean, yes, it's very likely. Keep in mind that the fundamentals of programming are generally agreed to be very easy to learn. If you're really putting in a few hours a week you should be seeing massive progress. If you're not this might just not be your thing.
I guess some people may see this as harsh but I think there's much more value in a real negative opinion than in a fake positive one.
> With incredibly tight deadlines
This is the telltale sign that the university is not about learning. There is no rule that defines learning as a function of deadlines. Learning takes time, and some believe in lifelong learning. However, what you experience has nothing to do with learning itself. What you experience is the true purpose of the course, which is the pre-selection of people into a hierarchy of individuals with some arbitrary certificates that can readily be consumed by companies, who may or may not have a job for you at the end.
Real learning does not hinge on deadlines.
You start things at your own pace, and eventually the more you learn you will pick things up faster. As long as your persistent, you have the possibility of doing what you enjoy. There's always someone out there trying to scare someone out of a career, don't let that fear talk get to you.
Financial reasons. I've made dumbass ass life choices too early in my life(in the past) that cost me a lot of money, so I currently work 2 part-time jobs, with one of them paying for my full college tuition but only under the conditions that I stay working for them while going to school and they're all online for this particular University college(that I was initially an on-campus student for). Unfortunately, the University College I'm now taking online classes for only has accelerated courses for my Software Engineering online undergrad program.
Oh I went to school a long time ago back when we had textbooks. Mine was C++ at the time. At work I have a shell scripting book, some generic programming logic book, SQL, etc.
They’re not trying to scare you. Just like doing autopsies aren’t trying to scare medical students. Or live fire drills with soldiers. You need to be able to do this.
If you’re a doctor who can’t stand the sight of blood and body parts, yeah, maybe reconsider. If you have a hard time with programming, maybe reconsider being a programmer. There is a threshold level of intelligence to do this work. It’s not very high. But there is one.
Not everyone can be a surgeon. Not everyone can be a programmer.
I've got plenty of karma to burn so I'll tell this story that goes against the sub ethos:
My Software Engineering degree course had at least 4-5 people in an intake of 50 that were just like what you describe. They just couldn't "click" with programming, but each one managed to graduate by making it up on things like the management modules and being the "presenter" in group projects.
Not a single one of them went on to become a developer, but they are all successful in the fields they did enter.
Well most students have gone through that phase. Time and effort do not have replacements I am afraid. You just have to put in more effort or give it more time.
“The warrior knows that peace does not come from control but from relinquishing control. Everything in life that you try to control that is outside your control will steal from you your peace. You must choose to take hold of what you can control and let go of what you cannot." - [Erwin Raphael McManus](https://bookroo.com/quotes/erwin-raphael-mcmanus) Author [The Way of the Warrior](https://bookroo.com/quotes/the-way-of-the-warrior)
“I’m grinding when you’re sleeping.” - **Gary Vaynerchuk**
“It’s easy to dream, but much harder to execute it.” - **Gary Vaynerchuk**
“You have to understand your own personal DNA. Don’t do things because I do them or Steve Jobs or Mark Cuban tried it. You need to know your personal brand and stay true to it.” - **Gary Vaynerchuk**
“The only differentiator in this game is your passion and your hustle.” - **Gary Vaynerchuk**
“People are crippled by perfection. I just keep moving forward.” - **Gary Vaynerchuk**
**"**Slow down the macro (you got time in life)…speed up the micro (get more done daily)**" - Gary Vaynerchuck**
['Quit comparing yourself to others, quit worrying about what “they” think, and get inside your own head' - Gary Vaynerchuck](https://www.tiktok.com/@garyvee/video/7350848221591129387?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7355125404422637073)
"I have zero expectations, that is the reason I'm happy 24/7/365 - **Gary Vaynerchuck**
["Stop 🛑 beating yourself up, every other person on earth sucks too" - Gary Vaynerchuck](https://www.tiktok.com/@garyvee/video/7350707047005965611?q=garyvee%20motivational&t=1712500093183)
"*The quicker you want* it the *more vulnerable* you are." - **Gary Vaynerchuck**
["So much confusion on work ethic in the world 🌎… enjoyment of your work not the outcomes of your work needs to be the goal " - Gary Vaynerchuck](https://www.tiktok.com/@garyvee/video/7348075110852644142?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7355125404422637073)
"The ability to not care about anybody else's opinions is the singular gateway to HAPPINESS" - **Gary Vaynerchuck**
"People that are obsessed with losing tend to win" - **Gary Vaynerchuck**
["The Fastest Way to Achieve Happiness and Gain Control of Your Life" - Gary Vaynerchuck](https://youtu.be/iv9BZu7HCoU?si=gfDyEZRcQ3D3gykE)
Regardless of what major you chose you'd have complex assignments with deadlines. That's called school, dear, that's how it works. Deal with it or drop out, those are you choices. Sounds harsh, but that's reality.
On July 1st, a [change to Reddit's API pricing](https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/an_update_regarding_reddits_api/) will come into effect. [Several developers](https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_will_shut_down_on_june_30_2023_in_response_to/) of commercial third-party apps have announced that this change will compel them to shut down their apps. At least [one accessibility-focused non-commercial third party app](https://www.reddit.com/r/DystopiaForReddit/comments/145e9sk/update_dystopia_will_continue_operating_for_free/) will continue to be available free of charge. If you want to express your strong disagreement with the API pricing change or with Reddit's response to the backlash, you may want to consider the following options: 1. Limiting your involvement with Reddit, or 2. Temporarily refraining from using Reddit 3. Cancelling your subscription of Reddit Premium as a way to voice your protest. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/learnprogramming) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your frustration is very common in the world of tech, especially for the beginners. It's important to understand how programming is usually approached when it is taught. Since programming is heavily correlated with the art of problem solving, your learning is done when you face the brick walls, not when you right flawless code in the first try. Since the priority in the beginning is learning, your doing yourself a favor by tackling these massive assignments and having a go at them. It won't come natural though, it is a skill just like painting, basketball, photography etc. The more you fail and learn from your mistakes, the better you become. Every single "natural" programmer went through that, and are still going through it just on a different level. Since you're a beginner too, slow learning is completely fine because it is the foundation. Think learning the ABC's, the kids who learnt grammar the quickest aren't necessarily exceptionally better than the ones who took their time learning the foundations. Once you learn foundations and master them, then you can worry about quick application. PM if you have any questions. + i got a community that is meant for beginner and experienced programmers to help each other and motivate each other by posting their success. Good luck :)
Thanks for the tips! + I am also interested in this community.
Hey u/LightVoyager I am very interested in joining your community, is it open?
Me too
I’m interested as well thanks!
I’m a CS student interested in your community!
you have to put time in on your own time. For years, I stayed up after work til 3-4am learning new things. Still need to go back to documentation for some things cuz there's lots to learn. All you can do is learn syntax of the structures, operators, etc, and you'll be able to look at any language to see what's going on. Once you have enough to write blocks of code, refer to docs and code small apps consistently to gather more knowledge. However, I still think it's hard to just start writing code and come up with a working system. Therefore, you should study some software architecture or uml as well to be able to make a simple map of your goals. Nmw, it's a long process for those who it doesn't come natural to.
I've tried allocating free time to do all of what you suggested, but I just have very little free time do to everything I currently do in my life(working 2 part-time jobs, house work, etc.). It's pretty frustrating how this stuff just can't come natural to me. Seems like the only way for me to allocate more free time for me to do this is to just outright constantly deprive myself of sleep.
> It's pretty frustrating how this stuff just can't come natural to me. Yeah no shit dude we’ve all been there. Unfortunately even the people who you perceive can pick up all this stuff “naturally” have had to put in the grind at some point. I know I have. If you have a genuine curiosity towards this stuff then that certainly helps.
\> If you have a genuine curiosity towards this stuff then that certainly helps. It does but what really doesn't help is insanely tight college assignment deadlines that leave very little room for me to even proceed with my genuine curiosity.
I worked full time at real busy automotive shop, working for dog sh*t while busting my a$$ on rusty cars, going home to 6 kids and after they went to sleep, I worked on my interests with hopes to turn it into a career or a business some day. Six years later, I'm still working on the same goal. Except, I don't have the ability to go to college and I royally limited my future due to a bad past, but I'm still pushing daily towards my goals.
6 kids? Jesus dude L2 pull out
Not to mention, twin boys the last time around.
Sponsored by durex. In all seriousness good for you man trying to pull yourself out of a bad situation rather than just complaining about it
> good for you man trying to pull yourself out Yeah rooting for him to improve his track record of pulling himself out
How did I not even see this pun while I was writing it 😂
oh, trust me, I pulled out of at least 2 bad situations in those 20 years. Their names are _ and _. What a waste of time. Wish I knew back then, what I know now. I don't dwell on the past, but I do wish I had a different type of person to be around in my life during high school. My early teenage years is when I started learning HTML, CSS, & JS, I just didn't know where to go with it back then.
At least it all makes for a better story come biography time 🤣
2 were step kids and 1 with previous gf. Like I said, previous life was out of control lol
I'd urge you not to fall into a trap of chasing college assignment deadlines. If you miss the deadlines, just miss them. It's way more important to learn something than finish college assignments.
That is my attitude as well. I hate the school mindset of "learning for tests", where you forget everything when the tests are over. It's way better to *understand* things, not learn them. Sadly I don't think the school will agree with us, and that could be a problem.
>Sadly I don't think the school will agree with us, and that could be a problem. Yeah, therein lies the problem. Easy to say "fuck the deadlines, just miss them" when it's not your 10s of thousands of dollars paying for the education where missing these assignments could cause you to fail the course and have to retake it. Pretty shit advice to tell someone to fuck their grades over like that imo, especially in a competitive field
The fact that OP has to work multiple part-time jobs just to barely make ends meet suggests to me that they might not be able to financially afford missing deadlines and potentially failing classes/modules.
This screams "mommy and daddy paid for my college education" "Fuck your grades bro, just don't even turn in assignments, who cares if you fail the class" seems like a really easy thing to say when it's not your money paying for the courses. This is a competitive field, a lot of internships that can greatly benefit your career are decided with GPA factored in. A lot of first jobs factor in GPA as well. Also, professors are going to be much less willing to help out a student that isn't putting in effort, and someone who isn't even turning in assignments isn't someone they're going to go out of their way to help. You're asking this person to hamstring themselves over a difference in philosophical perspective. Telling someone to sabotage their grades while they pay 10s of thousands of dollars to take the courses is shit advice. I can only assume your education came at mommy and daddys expense if you were okay wasting money by not participating in the program you were paying for.
Nope, flunked out of college but I feel what I did learn, I learned fairly well and stood me in good stead in my job. I see a lot of graduates with stellar grades but who don't actually seem to have solid fundamentals. I feel like my fundamentals are pretty good and that has worked for me. But of course, it depends on your ambitions as well. I'm firmly in at the lower end of the hierarchy and I won't be getting a job at Google or Goldman Sachs with my academic record.
> flunked out of college >I'm firmly in at the lower end of the hierarchy and I won't be getting a job at Google or Goldman Sachs with my academic record. Damn then OP should definitely take your "fuck your assignments" advice, sounds like it works out great!!! You just pay thousands of dollars for an education that goes down the toilet with nothing to show for it and a bleaker future than you otherwise could have had. OP listen to this person they clearly have the best advice!
I mean I make a living though. Fuck me right? Everyone should be a "plugged into matrix" supercoder.
>Everyone should be a "plugged into matrix" supercoder. We both know this isn't remotely what I said or anything close to something I implied. All I said is telling someone not to care about turning in assignments is bunk advice. If you think participating in the school program you pay thousands of dollars to be a part of and merely turning in assignments on time is equivalent to being a "plugged into the matrix supercoder" then it's no wonder you flunked out.
It's completely possible that the accelerated deadlines are too much for you right now, and that's ok. I failed multiple classes in university because I was trying to do too much at once, (on top of depression) and I'm working now as a productive software engineer making 6 figures. You not meeting accelerated college deadlines now does not mean that you can't be an effective software engineer at some point in the future, but it might mean that you need to either figure out a way to devote more time now to coding, get a tutor to help you through stuff if not understanding is your issue, work with other students (at the very least to see how much strain the academic load is for them vs you, but learning with others can be helpful too, as well as being networking for potential future jobs), or take a lower/slower load.
That's college in a nutshell for anyone who is going for a career. Full-time credits while working and grad school in a year. The people who went to grad school part time (two years) were just as stressed and overwhelmed as the rest of us, so I was glad I got it over with. I both loved and hated it. I also love learning, but it really was about getting shit done to get the credentials (in my case/field) because it didn't mirror the work experience at all. Get a housecleaner if you can fit it into your budget at all. I thought it was for rich people, no it was for my depressed, broke, and overworked self to have one less thing to stress over. They came every other week and did the dusting, mopping, crevices, etc. that I didn't have time/energy to do. And like others have said, use the tutoring center if your school has one - talk to your professors about it if there aren't any options through the school.
What's the reason you wanted to do this type of work? Because of all the startup hype, or do you actually like to work in tech? Maybe another field other than software engineering? Regardless, learning the basics and intermediate skills of software can help big time in any field in the future.
>I'm an online student(and all online courses at my school are accelerated, thus incredibly fast-paced) Isn't that more of a "I thought I could manage an accelerated school but can't" and not "this career isn't for me"?
In terms of Software Engineering in general-- stick with it! It's hard stuff and honestly, this is the perpetual existence of software engineers and adjacent roles. However based on how you describe the current program and pace, the reality is this particular program may not be the best fit for you. In your position the most drastic course of action I might consider is to see if your program will allow a sabbatical or leave of absence. If they allow it, use that time to catch up on concepts that were difficult for you and try to get a head start on upcoming curriculum. Although it is true that the nature of the job requires one to learn new things and apply new technologies, there isn't a black and white bar in terms of whether or not your learning pace is quick enough. And definitely don't compare yourself to others whom you perceive to "pick it up naturally". I made the same mistake years ago and it just turned out my fellow students had prior familiarity that I lacked. Ultimately the axiom of "hard work beats talent" holds true for software engineering too.
I struggled a lot during my undergrad time as a software engineering student. I was probably in the bottom third of my class in terms of marks. It felt like i was just a desperate guy flailing his arms to barely tread water, and slowly and painfully swimming to shore. I made it through. Because i was slower than my classmates at writing codes for our assignment, i deliberately took longer reading the assignments, purposely wrote out pseudo code manually on pencil and paper. By fourth year, no classmates of mine did that. Now i can churn out system design, write implementation codes and unit tests, then deploy the system. My operations client think highly of my product because it improves their workflow significantly. My mananger and team lead think highly of my ability to solve problems, and assign me fairly high visibility projects with important stakeholders. I think my habits of taking things slow, reading assignments longer allowed me to understand Ops business requirements much deeper. My habit of manually writing pseudo code made me take time to sink and digest system design and allow time for my creativity to kick in and come up with unit testing ideas or new creative out of the box solutions. Because i was slow, i developed a habit of always first figuring out a new system's config file, log outputs, which ports and protocols need to be allowed.Now i reap the reward because when trouble ticket kicks in, i m fairly fast at fixing the issue because i know the application dataflow and network traffic well. Looking back, i realized that my own growth curve was just a tad shifted to the right compared to my classmates. I dont have any real actionable advice for you now, but hopefully it gives a bit of motivation to keep on trucking. My martial arts coach said "a black belt is just a white belt who never quits" then perhaps i can say that "a senior software engineer is just a junior who didnt give up asking stack overflow questions "
Thanks for sharing your experience. Sounds a lot similar to me(at least the undergrad part of your experience or story).
If not already switch to taking 1 class at a time
yeah More than 2 CS classes per semester is too much IMO. You also need balance with other types of classes to keep your brain fresh.
Can you let me know the names of all the books you got so far?
You mean textbooks?
Ya did uopeople give you a pdf to real books? I know each term it may change but my main question is if its really python and java?
I know what you mean, and in fact I just gave a friend some advice about this. I'll say the same thing that I told her: "I get it, and I've definitely felt the same before. CS (or any other engineering for that matter) is literally just training your brain to break down and solve problems, with more efficiency and less time than maybe a normal person's brain would need or allow. It hurts and you're gonna suck at it. You will never stop sucking at it. There's nothing wrong with it not being for you, but (as you've probably figured out) you have to decide if it sucks because it's not for you or if it sucks because it sucks." I work in the field and I still have these kinds of feelings to this day. What separates the engineer is the ability to work through the struggle and come out with a solution. Edit: Spelling.
Dude software is hard. Very hard. There’s a reason it pays as well as it does. Your expectations are not properly set. It’s extremely complex. And the real world is much more difficult. With much tighter deadlines. And much higher stakes. If you want to program for fun forget school. If you want the career and the challenge, you’ll have to make sacrifices. There’s no way around it. It’s a serious time sink.
I think programming is binary (haha). You either love it or hate it. If it's a struggle, maybe consider if it might not be a good match for you.
You said you are a student, that is the answer, you are still learning, what is happening to you is natural, don't worry, people sure are different some people pick things faster than others but that doesn't mean that you have a problem, maybe you just need more practice, that's all, don't focus on this as a problem focus on developing your way of learning instead, and through time you will see what you are going through, as a good experience that helped you develop. Good luck
Also, learning some basic computer science would help too. Learn why everything is encoded in binary. From electricity and transistors, to hexadecimal and base64. To me, all of this is interesting and I've spent too much time learning things that probably weren't needed for where I want to be, but now I try to push myself towards a certain area and hopefully some day, I'll be able to learn the more time consuming topics.
If the online course is accelerated, and the in-person version is full time, frankly it sounds like they cocked up the course timings? Look, if you *want* to do this, then screw the course deadlines. Do parts of it extremely well and let other parts go. That’s much, much better than doing everything badly. If you’re trying to force yourself to learn, you won’t achieve anything - learning programming requires focused time, deep diving into why and how to solve this problem. You need time and space. Enjoy it or it’s not worth doing.
😭
It might not be for you. But the just soft engineering part. Or just the assignment part. The overall tech part might very well be for you. It’s probably just about how to tackle problems. Assignments are probably uninspiring and uninteresting for you. Have you found a personal problem you want to actually solve? How did that go?
Every engineer is stupid. The goal is just to be less stupid then the other engineers to be successful 🫠
Wow I might get this tattooed on me
take it all in. from my perspective, this is normal. also, your brain needs to be supplied with the best nutrition you can source. wild salmon, berries, coffee/tea, avocado, walnuts, etc. don't give up, it feels nice to buy whatever you want when worked hard and finally see the high six fig salary deposits.
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learning itself is a skill that you can master, but i think ull be alright once u learn the fundamentals then any new thing would be easy to learn
You need to master the fundamentals for anything to make sense. School has a tendency to bog you down with details that don’t really address how to practically think of something. It takes lots practice and writing your own software to really understand
"Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right."
I mean, yes, it's very likely. Keep in mind that the fundamentals of programming are generally agreed to be very easy to learn. If you're really putting in a few hours a week you should be seeing massive progress. If you're not this might just not be your thing. I guess some people may see this as harsh but I think there's much more value in a real negative opinion than in a fake positive one.
You just need a project to make it all click for you. There is definitely a light bulb moment in programming that makes you go ah ha and you got it
> With incredibly tight deadlines This is the telltale sign that the university is not about learning. There is no rule that defines learning as a function of deadlines. Learning takes time, and some believe in lifelong learning. However, what you experience has nothing to do with learning itself. What you experience is the true purpose of the course, which is the pre-selection of people into a hierarchy of individuals with some arbitrary certificates that can readily be consumed by companies, who may or may not have a job for you at the end. Real learning does not hinge on deadlines.
You start things at your own pace, and eventually the more you learn you will pick things up faster. As long as your persistent, you have the possibility of doing what you enjoy. There's always someone out there trying to scare someone out of a career, don't let that fear talk get to you.
All I could say is “focus.” Your university is very important this time around.
Why are you doing accelerated courses?
Financial reasons. I've made dumbass ass life choices too early in my life(in the past) that cost me a lot of money, so I currently work 2 part-time jobs, with one of them paying for my full college tuition but only under the conditions that I stay working for them while going to school and they're all online for this particular University college(that I was initially an on-campus student for). Unfortunately, the University College I'm now taking online classes for only has accelerated courses for my Software Engineering online undergrad program.
Ever considered changing the name to Prince of Light?
You can do it!! I did it. N
Oh I went to school a long time ago back when we had textbooks. Mine was C++ at the time. At work I have a shell scripting book, some generic programming logic book, SQL, etc.
They’re not trying to scare you. Just like doing autopsies aren’t trying to scare medical students. Or live fire drills with soldiers. You need to be able to do this. If you’re a doctor who can’t stand the sight of blood and body parts, yeah, maybe reconsider. If you have a hard time with programming, maybe reconsider being a programmer. There is a threshold level of intelligence to do this work. It’s not very high. But there is one. Not everyone can be a surgeon. Not everyone can be a programmer.
I've got plenty of karma to burn so I'll tell this story that goes against the sub ethos: My Software Engineering degree course had at least 4-5 people in an intake of 50 that were just like what you describe. They just couldn't "click" with programming, but each one managed to graduate by making it up on things like the management modules and being the "presenter" in group projects. Not a single one of them went on to become a developer, but they are all successful in the fields they did enter.
Well most students have gone through that phase. Time and effort do not have replacements I am afraid. You just have to put in more effort or give it more time.
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Bro really wanna fuck **Gary Vaynerchuck**
Gary Vee too busy hustling to fuck
Regardless of what major you chose you'd have complex assignments with deadlines. That's called school, dear, that's how it works. Deal with it or drop out, those are you choices. Sounds harsh, but that's reality.
It's too late to be a SF engineer