Developer Challenges
I think that there are several challenges to learning how to develop, i’ll go over three of the big ones I’ve had trouble with so far. The first of which is getting the proper setup on your computer to actually be able to program. Secondly, when learning a language it’s difficult to remember what everything does and sometimes it’s hard because you know there is a more efficient way to do something, but you just don’t know the name of the method. Lastly, and I think it is very important to be addressed, is motivation. When I started programming, it was difficult for me to download and setup the program the correct way, and I almost quit the first time because of it. About nine months ago I became really interested in programming and so I took a stab at it. I did maybe a course or two on CodeAcademy and I proceeded to try and download an editor so I could try making something on my own computer. I continued to get so many errors when I tried to run my code and I couldn’t find any help on the internet that I decided that it wasn’t worth my time and I stopped. I stopped for a few months and the only reason I didn’t give it up completely was motivation, which I’ll talk about later. That’s one of the reasons I’m glad I joined Bloc, I’m able to get the proper set up on my computer through their help, and now the hard part is learning how to program, not the computer setup itself. Another issue I’ve faced is that learning a language can be tough. There are so many methods and ways of doing something in programming that it can be tough to remember all of them. Now with a course like Bloc, where you learn several languages, take that task of learning one language and multiply it by four or five. I will say though, from my experience, after learning one language it does seem easier to pick up the next one. What i’ve tried to do is that as I learn a new method, I try and write it down in a notebook. Regardless of whether I ever look at that notebook again or not, it does help me remember the method better than if I did nothing. Finally I think it is important to talk about motivation. I think after not understanding a concept the first time, it is easy to just give up because it doesn’t make sense. That’s what I did the first time when I couldn’t set my computer up properly. However, I came back because I told myself, if someone can make a program, why can’t you. I’m interested in programming and I find it fascinating that something can be made out of nothing, but I understand that it’s challenging, and that is also why everyone doesn’t do it. Moral of the story, is not to give up and to keep on grinding.