Was anyone else overwhelmed when first learning how to code?

Question

Hey there! I am making this post because I want to get your opinion on something, so I can check whether your experience with programming is similar with mine. Some context: I am now working as a full time developer. A few days ago, I randomly thought back to the days where I first started coding.Interestingly enough, one of the things I remember from back then was feeling very, very confused. All the resources I needed to be able to become a great developer were there for free, but there was a problem - there was so much information out there that it was hard to know where to start. Everytime I tried to learn something new, it felt like a gamble - will I learn something new that will completely change the way I write code, or will I hit a wall and be stuck for 2 months, getting nothing done?And then I realized - in the 2 years I've been working as a full time dev, I learned more than in 6 years fooling around by myself. Why was that? The answer was pretty simple - I was surrounded by people who have already been there before. But, the fascinating thing is the following: these people never once took my keyboard and started typing away when I asked them for help with a bug. They didn't go to the closest whiteboard and hold a 45 minute seminar whenever I was confused by some obscure design pattern. They simply told me - "oh.. why don't you look X up on Google", or "check out this class, it does something similar to what you need". And that was it; they just told me where to look, and that made all the difference.So, this is what I want to get your opinion on. Do you relate to this as a senior developer looking back on your early days? Are you just starting out and feeling overwhelmed? Did you just save the new collague 4 hours of work by telling him where to look in the code?I've made a survey to see what your experience looks like. It takes around 2 minutes, here it is:https://forms.gle/3Wed1psohJEmfnVJ9Thank you for your time!

alexf95 · Accepted Answer

I was somewhat similarly like you in the beginning. But for me, I it wasn't coding itself but rather on how to build everything around it. The coding logic was pretty clear to me, when I started with it: variables, loops, etc. But when it came to "what do I need to actually build software out of it", I hit several mental blocks. But, again like you, later in life I learned that most things are usually just learned on the fly via for example google since it is impossible to know everything about every single framework or various other things that you need to have in order to build a finished product.

lordnacho · Answer

Yes, absolutely. Particularly early on, there are a lot of minor hurdles that you won't have a clue about. Silly things like versions not matching, missing semicolons, documentation that is outdated. These are all things that have you tearing your hair out if you're new to it.
One problem is the idea that you've ever "learned to program". It creates an expectation that you'll know whatever it is that you need. In reality, I've never coded anything where I knew everything about what to do. It's all an exploration: learning git, learning how to compile c++, learning how to deploy things in containers. There's always a new piece to learn about, and that's the real skill. It's both intellectual and psychological: you need to be smart, and you have to force yourself to learn things.
The problem with being new at anything is you don't have the map. There's a bunch of terms describing your space, but you don't know which ones are important. You can google anything, but you don't know what to google. When you get dropped into a working team, you at least end up with something that works, and people who can tell you how they think about it.