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- Is there any genius who does self-code?
Is there any genius who does self-code?
Hello, everyone! I am newbie to programming and as I study, I find it no that easy. At present I have neither teacher nor class even friends(not boasting actually). Are there anyone who did success in programmng just by doing self-study? I mean by reading books and by researching internet. If there were someone like me, could you tell me any suggestions on how can I make it through? I sometimes spend a great amount of time on a single problem. And as I dont understand it, I cant keep going on. Honestly I am stuck with it. Books, are they really a huge suppprt? Websites also? Up until now, I find by reading books that each of their explanation orders is different. Some authors only present about long examples, others like(Bjarne Stroustrup takes the readers to a higher level ie I dont understand the way he explains since chapter 6). Should I stop it? Or should I continue? I am not posting my feelings, I just feel like I have little hope.
First off, this should probably go in the Beginners section of the forum.
Now, I am someone who learnt how to program with no formal instruction; I learnt entirely from websites, so I can probably give a few tips you might find helpful.
The most important thing, I found, was to actually try what you are learning in the tutorial, as you are learning it. It makes it much easier to solidify that in your mind, and you'll understand better if you have practical experiences with the topic. It doesn't even have to be anything useful - just throw something together, run it, change things, run it again, and so on until you feel you have a good understanding of how it works.
Sometimes, this can be difficult, and it might be problematic trying to understand something enough for you to try to use it all. In this case, try looking at a few different resources. As you mentioned, different authors have different styles, and focus on different things. Find a few tutorials that you like and look at all of them, or maybe try to find a tutorial dealing solely with your specific problem.
Once you have a good understanding of something, but find that you can't work something out in a specific case, then the various forums and newsgroups on the internet can be immensely helpful as well. The archives for these things will almost definitely have something that is very similar to your problem, and a little bit of research could net you a bunch of various solutions. If you can't find anything that seems to work, though, then posting your own question can allow someone else to solve your problem for you. Just make sure that you follow the forum's guidelines for where you are asking a question - it makes it more likely that you'll get a solution for your problem.
Of course, for you to ever be able to properly learn programming, you'll need to persevere, and keep on trying. Becoming a good programmer is not a matter of sitting down over the weekend with a tutorial - it can be a very long process, which often will never end. Just find some way to encourage yourself to keep trying, and you should eventually manage.
Now, I am someone who learnt how to program with no formal instruction; I learnt entirely from websites, so I can probably give a few tips you might find helpful.
The most important thing, I found, was to actually try what you are learning in the tutorial, as you are learning it. It makes it much easier to solidify that in your mind, and you'll understand better if you have practical experiences with the topic. It doesn't even have to be anything useful - just throw something together, run it, change things, run it again, and so on until you feel you have a good understanding of how it works.
Sometimes, this can be difficult, and it might be problematic trying to understand something enough for you to try to use it all. In this case, try looking at a few different resources. As you mentioned, different authors have different styles, and focus on different things. Find a few tutorials that you like and look at all of them, or maybe try to find a tutorial dealing solely with your specific problem.
Once you have a good understanding of something, but find that you can't work something out in a specific case, then the various forums and newsgroups on the internet can be immensely helpful as well. The archives for these things will almost definitely have something that is very similar to your problem, and a little bit of research could net you a bunch of various solutions. If you can't find anything that seems to work, though, then posting your own question can allow someone else to solve your problem for you. Just make sure that you follow the forum's guidelines for where you are asking a question - it makes it more likely that you'll get a solution for your problem.
Of course, for you to ever be able to properly learn programming, you'll need to persevere, and keep on trying. Becoming a good programmer is not a matter of sitting down over the weekend with a tutorial - it can be a very long process, which often will never end. Just find some way to encourage yourself to keep trying, and you should eventually manage.
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I've done the same, as in reading tutorials and references and SO threads, for 6 languages. There are two problems that I often came across:
1) Getting some ridiculous error and not knowing how to fix it even after hours of research. (But you can just ask here or on SO)
2) Sometimes I found myself reading the dictionary but not knowing how to write a sentence. (Which some more research and editing examples so you can see how they work can solve)
1) Getting some ridiculous error and not knowing how to fix it even after hours of research. (But you can just ask here or on SO)
2) Sometimes I found myself reading the dictionary but not knowing how to write a sentence. (Which some more research and editing examples so you can see how they work can solve)
One advice I can give you is:
- allways try to figure out why you get compiler errors and what they mean.
People on this forum sometimes ask "what am I doing wrong? I get error message [...]" but this is one of the most crucial parts of developing: understand what the compiler tells you.
This does not mean you should not ask the internet, I just want to say that you should spend a few minutes with it (depending on your motivation 10-30 minutes) before looking it up on the internet so you'll understand what has happened there.
As the others mentioned you should allways do the things you read/see yourself.
Furthermore you should write a program where you combine all the things you learned before you end your learning session for the day.
You should also repeat the things you learned, and by repeat I don't mean "once every month" but more like once every few days when you just learned it and the more time has passed you don't don't need to repeat things as often.
When you have a very good understanding you won't have to repeat what you've learned at some point, you'll know stuff without even thinking about it.
Don't rush things!
When you rush things you might learn more than your brain can handle, take it easy, it's not a contest on who get's there first, just make sure you know what you're doing when writing code.
I've started learning C++ with Video tutorials on youtube, I've been programming for about 3-4 years now and I think I'm quite good at it.
After one year I had a reasonable understanding of most of the basic features and could make all these things that came to my mind.
- allways try to figure out why you get compiler errors and what they mean.
People on this forum sometimes ask "what am I doing wrong? I get error message [...]" but this is one of the most crucial parts of developing: understand what the compiler tells you.
This does not mean you should not ask the internet, I just want to say that you should spend a few minutes with it (depending on your motivation 10-30 minutes) before looking it up on the internet so you'll understand what has happened there.
As the others mentioned you should allways do the things you read/see yourself.
Furthermore you should write a program where you combine all the things you learned before you end your learning session for the day.
You should also repeat the things you learned, and by repeat I don't mean "once every month" but more like once every few days when you just learned it and the more time has passed you don't don't need to repeat things as often.
When you have a very good understanding you won't have to repeat what you've learned at some point, you'll know stuff without even thinking about it.
Don't rush things!
When you rush things you might learn more than your brain can handle, take it easy, it's not a contest on who get's there first, just make sure you know what you're doing when writing code.
I've started learning C++ with Video tutorials on youtube, I've been programming for about 3-4 years now and I think I'm quite good at it.
After one year I had a reasonable understanding of most of the basic features and could make all these things that came to my mind.
Last edited on
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