Ask HN: Should I quit trying to be a programmer?

I would say to forget about problems involving algorithms and try to build projects with a very concrete use case. Maybe you should just quit trying to be a programmer that can pass a whiteboard interview at Google, and start trying to be a programmer that can provide usable software that solves a problem for a regular company.

Objectively, I would say that the problem you struggled with this morning should be doable by someone in comp sci 102 (and probably comp sci 101). That you're struggling with something like this, suggests that you're very out of practice and really haven't done any significant work recently (or at least not in Python). That doesn't mean you're unhirable, but it does mean that you're going to need to spend a lot of time prepping and working, probably significantly more time than your colleagues.

With that said, think about why you chose to major in computer science and what classes you enjoyed the most. Maybe there's a specialty you really want to do, maybe you would prefer to do something tangential to programming like project management, information security or data analysis. You may find more it more interesting and easier to work on practical projects. It's probably worth trying some web development work (especially in languages such as ruby or python with foreach semantics where you won't need to worry about off by one errors as much)

You said you brute-forced it, but you mentioned index variables. I thought the brute force solution would look something like:

  merged = sorted(a + b)
  median = merged[len(merged) / 2]

Like twunde said, you just sound rusty. How often do you write code? Do you use Python or something else? It sounds like you're putting too much pressure on yourself.

Here are my two cents. The reason why you're talking such a long time to get simple things done is because you haven't had enough experience. You said you were carried through projects and assignments, so this is all coming back to bite you. By letting yourself get carried, you missed out on the opportunity to make stupid mistakes, think through design choices, and learn what's good and bad.

Alas, not all is lost. Screw what you did wrong yesterday and in the past, and start fresh today.

For personal projects, keep the scope minimal. Better to finish something than not finish anything at all. And if you're struggling with something as basic as type errors, then your approach to programming is wrong. You have to drill this to your head: code a little, test a little.

Of course, all of this on the assumption that you have speckles of ember left to turn it into a fire - to have the drive to learn and improve.

Best of luck.

I've been in your shoes before, and I think the others have said it better, but basically:

- You need better practice, not more practice

- There's a difference between <being able to be hired by google> and <being able to be hired by a small company that needs a programmer>.

- Go through the MOOC "learning how to learn", sleep 8 hours, eat some ice cream, get hired by a small company, become a programmer.

Thank me in a couple of weeks for that.

My advice to you: pick a language and write a version of Space Invaders. Or find something else to tinker with. Bottom line, you need to practice your skill to get good at it. Right now you sound like you’re stuck in your head. Do something that renders your problem-solving skills in meatspace.

A lot of the things you learn at university you aren't going to be using on the job. You aren't going to be finding the median of two sorted arrays (very often). And even then a good google search will lead you to an elegant solution on stack overflow.

Granted it does take a knack to be a good programmer, attention to detail a feel for what's wrong when tracking down a bug.

But every problem will be a struggle the first time but as you get more experience things will get easier and easier and your programming intuition of what to do and what's wrong will become better and better.

There is a wide variety of jobs out there. Maybe test out a few frameworks and see what you like.

I always recommend learning Rails or Laravel because working on web applications is always interesting and both frameworks have great communities and learning resources.

Don't give up if you enjoy it. I think you're making it harder than it is. Your degree just gets you in the door. You're going to learn and do so much that wasn't covered in your classes.

Good luck.

The best way to learn programming is to make it a habit to spent long hours of your time in front of a computer practicing by picking up a book to teach you programming. Choose the topic you want to learn , a project you want to build , pick a book and learn it. Spend each day writing code for a few hours 5-6 Hrs preferably or more. And in 3 months you will become better, in 6 six even better. Also reach out for help, find what else is happening in that field , keep coming to HN. And you will be on the right path.

Keep working at it. Believe in yourself and your capabilities (as corny as it sounds). It really is about perseverance. If you find the frustration is wearing you down and making you feel hopeless, don't torture yourself doing work you don't want to do. With that said, if you feel a rush when things do click and that drives you, I think you'll do fine.

There are few prodigies in the field. Most people make it through sheer work ethic and self-belief. Do everything you can to hangout with other passionate people (if they're more skilled than you even better). The best way to do this is just get your foot in the door somewhere. Do whatever it takes. One year in a work environment gaining real world experience is priceless and your skills will skyrocket if you challenge yourself and step outside your comfort area.

Best of luck to you (whether you continue pursuing programming or something else)!

PS: For what it's worth, just understanding the above problem you described is half the battle. The other half is getting comfortable implementing different algorithms. For this, you can seriously just copy paste someone's solution from stack exchange and execute the code to observe the effects of your tweaks. It's kind of like how most people need to practice solving the math problems before being able to grasp the concepts behind the solution.

It sounds like you're not very satisfied with how your coding practice is going. If you have the resources, I would definitely recommend trying to find a tutor to do 1-on-1 sessions with. I've seen a lot of the behaviors you mention in people I've tutored.

This is especially relevant if you think your disability is affecting the quality of your practice. You made need to engage in different strategies to get the most out of practice. (or to manage the kinds of problems you're working on).

It's possible that you would have a lot of difficulty with a career in programming, but I wouldn't even consider that until a skilled tutor or two feel that way.

Maybe. It's your life - and you only get one. A lot of this is what you see yourself doing day in, day out.

There are lots of jobs that are coding adjacent. Technical SEO is an example. A mate of mine does installations of software inhouse.

You don't have to code, per se, you can likely find a job where coding knowledge helps but is not specifically what you do.

There is a lot s scope in IT beyond coding, and I'd consider exploring that.

I've a few years of experience tutoring programming. From what often see and from reading your description, it sounds like your problem is "need better planning before jumping to writing a code".

Programming is akin to building a house. Once the blueprint is figured out, the actual act of building (putting bricks together, etc) is actually pretty straightforward. The key though, is good the planning.

By good planning, in your example of returning the median, you should solve the problem before touching your computer. Use either pencil-and-paper or whiteboard method as much as possible. For example, I'd plan it as follow: 1. Solve it in a high-level manner, as if you're trying to teach someone who never codes a program before 2. Write down all the function definitions you need (don't code the body, just know what each does) 3. Write down how all the functions are to interact (again, don't write the body of any of the functions yet, just assume you have them) 4. Write down pseudocode for each of the functions 5. Code

I've seen lots of beginner programmers tried to skip over to 5 without concrete plan only ended up confusing himself over trivial problem. No matter how tempting it is, jumping straight to 5 without concrete plan is only going to confuse you.

I forgot whether it was Leslie Lamport or Edsger Dijkstra, but one of them said that a good programmer should have the skill to fully plan out a computer program without coding it.

Being frustrated over a problem or a series of problems is a normal thing. It sounds like you are fully engaging yourself, so I would not quit. There are valid reasons to quit, but I don't think this is one. You won't believe the amount of crappy code you will see in your career. I won't even touch or go near any PHP codebase for example.

I was a bit like you... struggled at university, failed plenty of topics (some twice) because it never "clicked". I fluked a job at a small company and turns out I'm pretty decent with people & understanding what people want/need. I got by with my code, but it was elementary if I'm honest with myself.

For the past 14 years I've run my own web dev company but I understood my limitations and hired people who are actually good at coding and I've stuck to what I'm good at.

From what you write, there doesn't appear to be a passion for coding - avoiding assignments & now struggling with core constructs point to that. But something at some point got you into this field - perhaps there's something to the side that might suit your skills/passion more? Testing, QA, project management, client management, business analysis... there's lots of roles that benefit of understanding programming concepts that don't rely on you actually being a gun programmer.

Well, I think alexanderdmitri's advice of looking for answers to coding problems on places like Stackoverflow is great advice and I'd like to expand on it a bit.

It's easy to get sucked into a coding problem and fight with it for days like it's a personal challenge to your abilities. That can turn into a habit. It did for me. Screw that. Admit you have a problem and then get over it.

The goal of working is to produce something, and not necessarily, or even very often, to invent something new or even invent a new way of doing something. Coding is no different.

The truth is for most of us coding is more often akin to assembling something even when you're designing and building something new. That's how I approach it anyway.

When I switched from coding mainly Perl to Javascript I learned (the hard way) to start searching for answers first instead of banging my head on my desk for hours (even days) over what were often times really just syntax issues or things that already had boilerplate solutions publicly available.

Learning to search for answers first made a huge difference in my productivity and in how much I enjoyed coding. Getting stuff done provides a sense of accomplishment and we all need that to inspire us to keep working.

And it's made me a better coder too. I have learned so many new and better ways to do things, as well as how not to do them, and found great explanations on the "whys" and "hows" in the process. And I learn them when they're relevant to what I'm working on too, not in some abstract way that is easy to forget or dismiss.

The truth is there is way more to learn about coding than we can possibly learn already and that gap is constantly expanding. That's really a great thing though because learning on a need to know basis makes it so much easier to get stuff done. It lets us focus on one problem at a time and not worry about what comes after. We can learn what we need when we get there and by then there might be a new and better way.

When I first started making a habit of searching for answers and example code for how to do something I was amazed a few times to find an answer. Now I'm more surprised when I don't find one easily.

To me, that's what a "hacker" is in the truest sense. You find and write and hack together code. There's nothing wrong with that. It's why we have "open source" code and in fact it's truly awesome.

Occam's Razor:

"...the simplest solution tends to be the right one..."

Although its not the intended context, its extremely useful to remember when building software (at least to begin with)

All you lack is lots of practice. Programming is hard but gets easier the more your practice.

And I mean practice on some project that you are personally interested in completing, some genuine goal, not an exercise or theoretical. /academic challenge.

Don't quit. There is always someone you will be able to help. Computing science is not real life. Try higher level tools, they can do so much and help fill in a lot to connect the dots later.

You may be surprised to find you're able to help people solve technology problems that comp sci majors struggle to understand.

Keep moving, inward, onward, upward.

Working on a pet project and working on something you get paid for is also different.

When I work on my own things, I waste a lot of time trying different ideas/implementations because there's no time constraints or due date.

If you couldn't even do half your coding assignments, you're probably fucked. That indices edge case thingy with that problem is an annoying thing that trips me up too, but here you're saying you couldn't do half your coding assignments.

Let's say you want to make a single player Tetris game right now, on a platform of your choice. Could you do that?

> I don’t know what the difference between the normal struggle associated with coding is and the sort of struggle that means it’s just not for me.

Everyone struggles as they strain to reach the next level. Do you enjoy the struggle or its outcome? If you're not having fun now, programming as a career will seriously suck for you. If you are having fun, don't worry about your speed or how well you grok algorithms - find a job, any job, and try to kick ass at it. That'll set you up for a better job. Rinse and repeat.

With regards to actually getting a job, try and reframe your thinking around your Unique Selling Points. If you're feeling uncertain about the depth of your knowledge, then view that (and present it to others) as a certainty of your willingness to learn. There are a non-negligible number of employers who would rather take in developers who they can mold to their own coding style over someone who comes in heavily opinionated and looking to change the entire way the company does things.

Some developers I've worked with are incredibly smart, but also know that of themselves and (with that knowledge) prefer to work without the constraints of having to explain themselves to others. However genius doesn't scale well, and this kind of attitude can make them less effective in teams. So learning to be a team player and adopting scalable ways of working can be a strength of your lack of ego, if you choose to see it that way.

Don't just think there's one set of criteria that all employers are looking for. Present your best self and I'm sure you'll find somewhere to work.

I think you've made a lot of mistakes in the past: allowing yourself to be carried, not doing internships to gain work experience, not actively doing on-campus coding related events like hackathons and contests, not going to on-campus recruiting events, etc. But it's never too late to reset everything and start afresh. You can decide whether or not you still have the motivation and interest to continuing this path; if you do, you can go to coding boot camps, do online courses on MOOCs like coursera, do random personal projects, even read your old textbooks again, etc. You might be out of work for a few months or even a year but think of it as the time spent remedying your mistakes during college days.

Of course the alternative is to not be a programmer; there are still plenty of related disciplines you can choose from.

Ultimately it's up to you to decide if you even love doing programming; recall why you chose this major; do some soul-searching and decide whether you have the motivation and interest to continue. Maybe take a short break go to the mountains or somewhere else, and clear up your mind.

Don't give up ... Westerners are bit obsessed with the idea of "revealed" talents and leading indicators of capabilities. Pursue the things that draw you regardless of how good you are at them initially... don't waste your time lamenting test results. I would love to rant about the non-causality of IQ, grades, etc but it seems tangential.

Coding is not an activity reserved for the "gifted". Your daily thought processes are far more complicated than coding, and it's highly likely you have all the capacity you'll ever need to be good at it. Before you know it, you'll know 5-10 different languages and pick new ones up in days. You'll be able to solve problems in a dozen different ways, and translate problems from one structure to another; much the same way that you can already do with human language.

Ask yourself if you give-a-f*ck enough to stick with it. That's the main factor in most pursuits, the other considerations are for suckers and mostly benefit someone else.

If you have a disability, you may well face similar frustrations with anything you try.

Some disabilities can be helped with aggressive nutritional support.

You can also learn coping mechanisms to help you work around your weak areas more easily. The exact mechanism will depend very much on the disability in question.

I'm speaking from firsthand experience.

I'm medically handicapped. I have days when I'm fairly together and days when nothing comes easily. I do a lot of self care and I have learned coping mechanisms. I am more productive than I used to be and some tasks are just easier for me than others.

I also raised and homeschooled two sons who have disabilities. They still live with me.