Why is it so hard to finish coding courses?
Posted by True_Technician_8589@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 24 comments
I’ve started like 5 different coding courses and finished… maybe 1
I feel like long lessons kill my motivation.
Recently switched to shorter interactive exercises and it feels easier to keep going.
Do you guys struggle with this too?
Artonox@reddit
Because it gets more abstract and away from what you really want to do which is to create your project. The part of yourself for learning is different from the part for doing, and it's the doing that is screaming at you.
SkerdiBuilds@reddit
Short feedback loops win because they keep you engaged and progressing.
IAmFinah@reddit
Because they all start off easy and get harder
DefiantFrost@reddit
I say this with kindness, understanding, and love. Motivation is bullshit, only discipline matters. Even if you are interested in something there will be days you don’t feel like doing it, you’re tired, you’re sad, you’re bored, whatever. You just have to suck it up and do it anyway. There is no secret, its just suck it up and do it.
Am I always successful at doing that? No, quite often I fail at it, and that upsets me greatly. But sometimes I do manage it and it feels good.
huuaaang@reddit
Video courses are absolutely useless to me. I just dive in with a text based tutorial that I mainly use for reference while I try to do my own project.
Do I finish those projects? Rarely, but I still learn plenty.
SoupVegetable5841@reddit
Mee to , I prefer books, and I document everything in GitHub, I actually create tickets there (issues) so then I know in which chapter I was studying, really awesome these days with all the books in the palm of your hand ( iPhone), I don’t know how you frustrate so easily, you are really the Cristal generation, in my college days I had to go to the library and find the material there.
yellowmonkeyzx93@reddit
How come you are doing 5 coding courses at one go?
abhijith002@reddit
If completing courses itself is so hard then what about reading books? Does anyone read technical books anymore?
rizzo891@reddit
What books are worth reading? There is so much material out there it’s hard to tell what you should read and what’s useless
Wingedchestnut@reddit
Because you're thinking about learning 'coding' instead of focusing on learning building web/mobile/software... applications.
You need a roadmap, goal and think more high-level. Too many people are way too focused on the small stuff.
TheSoftwareMaster@reddit
Literally this. People don’t become “sports people”, they pick a sport, they don’t want to be a “tradesman”, they pick a trade. Coding is the same thing, people have to pick a discipline
Fun_Lawfulness536@reddit
bruh this hits home hard. I was doing same thing with car repair tutorials back in the day - kept jumping between different courses about engine diagnostics but never actually fixed anything lol
the mindset shift is real though. once I started thinking "I need to fix this specific BMW transmission issue" instead of just "learning about transmissions in general", everything clicked better. Having actual problem to solve makes the boring theory parts way more tolerable.
ameliawat@reddit
same, hour long lectures kill me. switched to doing small projects and just reading docs when stuck and it clicks way better
captainAwesomePants@reddit
Learning this stuff in classes is hard. Learning on your own is harder.
Learning things is a skill, and most of us are bad at it. The examine I like to give is learning a foreign language as an adult. Take a look at your local community college's offerings. There will be like 5 sections of "Spanish 1", then maybe 2 sections of "Spanish 2," and then maybe every other quarter they will offer a "Spanish 3." That's not because people learn all of the Spanish they need; it's because everybody quits. And it's not because the classes are bad.
The good news is that learning things is a skill and you can learn how to learn better. Now, this is of course a challenge because if you can't make it through a coding course even when you're interested in coding, you're going have even more trouble making it through a course about learning better. But if you can, it's helpful. Courses like this are useful: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
Zuparoebann@reddit
Yeah especially when I learn a new language from 0. Most courses repeat a lot of general information about programming that I already know, but I can't really skip it because there's info about the syntax mixed in that I'm trying to learn.
codewiser@reddit
Most of them aren't self paced, plus you end up studying things you aren't actually interested in.
The best solution would be to build your own courses. With exactly what you want to study!
Shameless plug for https://codewiser.io, it's free, hope it helps!
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PoMoAnachro@reddit
I imagine a lot of it is training your brain to expect short feedback cycles and frequent surges of dopamine. I imagine your overall ability to concentrate and focus on an extended task is at least part of the problem.
For better or worse, developing the ability to keep yourself on task and maintain mental focus for several hours a day for most of the weeks out of the year is kind of a core quality of being a programmer. If you can't develop that, the profession is probably beyond just, just like if you can't build the stamina to be on your feet doing manual labour for most of the day you probably can't work a lot of trades jobs.
Sometimes it is the course or how it is taught. But a lot of time you just need to improve your mental fitness to do a mental job, just like you might have to improve your physical fitness to do a physical job.
Miroko_san@reddit
Same here at first i feel very motivated but as the lesson go on i keep slowing down
DannHutchings@reddit
I noticed I stick with things way more when it’s short, interactive stuff instead of hour long lectures. It just feels easier to keep the momentum going that way.
simon_zzz@reddit
Very common when you believe a particular exercise/assignment doesn't seem interesting and applicable to you.
Still good to power through because you might need it later. Or, that it is just reinforcing a concept/setting the foundation for a future lesson.
Or, you might be ready to take off the training wheels--start working on a project that matters to you and you'll probably learn so much more.
noenergy300@reddit
It depends on the course and author But for escape/ avoid tutorial hell it's good practice to don't overwhelming your self with a lot number of course in same time and focus on understand code and concepts and using ai to explain things for you build solid fundamentals first after that find roadmap and build simple projects Good luck
grantrules@reddit
Self-learning is hard. There's nobody to keep you on task but yourself.