Programmers: Did you start a project to learn and then quit? I'd like to interview you
Posted by Dry_Rough_400@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 12 comments
Learning to code by building something real is the best way to learn. But a lot of people start that journey and then stop.
I'm interested in understanding why — not the technical obstacles, but the psychological moment when you decide to move on.
I'm interviewing people who've started learning-focused projects and abandoned them. 20 minutes. Written format. Confidential.
If that's your story, I'd appreciate hearing it.
Guilty_Use_3945@reddit
Honestly, scope of the project being to big. Smaller goals to set. However, even then because of the limited knowledge, you have you can go down the wrong path with a project then it can feel re doing it or starting a different path can seem insurmountable.
Dry_Rough_400@reddit (OP)
The 'starting over feels insurmountable' moment is exactly what I'm studying. Would you be open to 4 quick written questions about what that felt like when you realized you were on the wrong technical path?
Guilty_Use_3945@reddit
Sure do I go to a website or right here?
Lower-Instance-4372@reddit
This is actually a good angle, but a lot of people don’t quit because of psychology alone it’s usually a mix of getting stuck, losing momentum, and not having a clear “next step,” so you might want to dig into those practical blockers too.
DePhoeg@reddit
You'll get 2 majority answers. 1. Passion/Interests just petered out, and it's the same effect as someone just wanting to 'learn new things', rather than master them. This is also to point out that a completion of a reasonable project requires some level of mastery (even if it's just beginner/basic), and exceptionally few choose 'beginner level' projects and instead go "I'll make this XYZ Clone" and once the learning isn't learning... and instead repetition & practice, they stop feeling they learned. 2. It became to much, and they bit off way to much. 3. They wanted the impossible, and when they went to make the project, they learned it was impossible for any number of reasons & moved on.
Most importantly, you're forgetting to also filter out for those who actually picked beginner-level projects/learning projects vs those who unknowingly picked something that required .... ALOT more than just some beginner project ever should (by most standards)
Honestly, the ones that I find more interesting are those who've bit off more than they should have but were too stubborn/idealistic/hell-bent to just let it go, and their first learning projects were realized & required more than a learning project would ever need or be suggested to have.
Personally, the projects that I didn't give up on because of focus & memory just moving on, forgetting something (instead of giving it up), that would genuinely be my learning projects where... Frankly because I'm stubborn, greedy, and ... I just Wanted what I wanted. - Batch(Cmd) - Moving/handling excessively large amounts of data (TBs+) and automating checking & moving them, along with interacting with command line applications in windows, all for the sake of TV shows I wanted to record from Cable. (had the Cable Card, WTV) Working directly with Video formats & HandBrake, separating them, and the whole rabbit hole that was, exploring TS formats & coupling that with Windows. - Java - ... I Just wanted my damn'd Chocobos, and thankfully the leading chocobo mod at the time was ... stalled & non-functional (It's running now), but i went from zero to ... decent throughout it learning all the fun stuff that stacked java with Forge loader & fabric, and the untold complexities you can find when you dream to big and don't understand the codebase properly or whats or whys, or hows, or the tricks used, or even basice understanding of underlying tricks like bitshift, and carying that over a number of editions.
Dry_Rough_400@reddit (OP)
This is incredibly detailed — thank you. The 'learning cliff' moment is exactly what I'm researching. When the learning stops and repetition begins, and suddenly the project feels different. I'm particularly interested in the people who DID push through (like your Chocobos story). That stubbornness — what triggered it? Was it wanting the thing? Or something else? Would you be open to a 4-question written interview about that moment — either the projects you abandoned OR the one you pushed through?
DePhoeg@reddit
The points you'd want to look at are around how people handle moving from learning to doing (which is just deepening on things if you please), or in other words, 'why they choose to do it', which likely is so far off into the weeds that the topic of programming doesn't matter as it's about something outside the topic for that person. - aka, it'd be a distracting point to focus on the topic first, before the person's desires. - I also realize I say something like this in a vague way about purchased software for a need, replacing learning.
I don't think I could give you an answer that'd be meaningful to you in this way, but maybe I'm wrong in that. Feel free to ask what ya want. - It wasn't my first into programming, though it certainly was the first into a language that wasn't JS or Batch (Cmd), and it was an obsession with the Birbs as they were for me a part of my past that just wasn't satisfied.
I've had a few projects I've abandoned, mostly because I felt I achieved what I wanted (some C# project that was basically a hangman one because I wanted to get into C & C# design more mechanically & the only ones to have seen it were a close friend & it likely won't see the light of day again. Though the only ones that have been completely abandoned would be ... ones that have no relevance anymore, for any given reason (OS changes, Technological, Purchased Software to solve an issue I had, and I truly didn't care about learning nuts & bolts required to make it work)
Feel free to ask. It's not like I'm ashamed of any of it. I'm willing to share codebase examples. I'll wait for questions to give details, as it can get derailed if unfocused.
eror_404@reddit
Actually i wanted to make a big project and my gameplan was to build pices one by one and learn along the way, then found out its already there in the github. basically pointless
Cybyss@reddit
I'd be happy to share a story.
Now, I've been programming since the 1990s so I'm not brand new to programming overall.
However, a few years ago I bought a VR headset and fell in love with it. There's nothing quite like the feeling of standing in Helgen during Alduin's attack in Skyrim - of looking up and seeing a full life-sized dragon, or of piloting a Seamoth in the murky dunes of Subnautica, or of sitting on a hilltop of an alien world watching the sunset in No Man's Sky.
I wanted to learn VR game developmet, so I started learning Unity via the lessons on Pluralsight. I soon pivoted to learning Vulkan because - again, I'm not new to programming and I rather enjoy the "bare metal" side of things, of really understanding what's going on under the hood.
My mistake was that I started talking to my friends and family about what I've been learning. I found it all so fascinating, but... well...
That's when they started pressuring me into developing their game ideas. My brother was trying to push me into developing a phone app for some japanese language learning game he wants me to make. My mom thinks I could become a millionaire if all I do is recreate the same free web games she loves to play (e.g, hidden object games), except with increased font sizes and no timers so that old people can play them.
My whole family wanted to start a game development business, where my mom or bother are the "ideas" people, and I'm the "make it happen" engineer. They are unable to understand how fucking toxic such an arrangement is, and they questioned why I was wasting time learning Unity when it's online web games that make money, if I wanted to be a game developer so bad.
They pretty quickly extinguished any interest at all in game development so I stopped learned Unity, Vulkan, and VR game development. Now that I've moved an ocean away from them, I might get back into it, but... well... it's hard to stay interested in things when you've got nobody to share your interests with who won't try to twist it into something toxic.
Asleep-Party-1870@reddit
for anyone that wants to learn i always recommend https://www.edx.org/cs50
Svarii@reddit
For many it's not about finishing the project, it's about overcoming the challenge of the puzzle because they enjoy learning and figuring things out. Once the challenge is gone, the only thing left is tedious grunt work to finish the project.
lachesis17@reddit
I don't think this is limited to beginners because you learn something with everything you build. Experienced programmers do weekend projects for several reasons, being bored with your day job and wanted to do something you're interested in, exploring a concept you haven't had the chance to implement, needing to understand something better, curiosity, building out a portfolio because you can't use projects that are proprietary, etc etc
Typically you do these to scratch whatever the itch is and move on when it feels like it's "enough", whatever that definition is.
In the context of beginners, saying "now you've learned (x) in theory, do it yourself from scratch" is intimidating and sometimes let's them realise what the job really is - starting out with "wtf do I do" and finding a way to do it.
If it's not for you, it's not for you but it usually only ever boils down to: discipline, perseverance and actually enjoying what you're doing.