Back in 7th grade - about 5 years ago - I first found python. I had no idea what programming was, but i saw a game that I wanted to create and it said this is how.
I read the elusive documentation (to a 12 year old me, very elusive) word for word and just went with it.
At the time, I didnt't know what a compiler or an interpreter was so I just wrote it all down on paper and did the calculations/instructions in my head and wrote down the results. (I couldn't tell if I had an error or not)
After about 2-3 weeks, I quit. I couldn't understand anything really. I had no idea what a class was or what a method did. About a year later, I heard of minecraft and started playing that. I heard it was made with java so I went on youtube (which I recently found existed) and watched java game development tutorials.
Needless to say, it was hard and I didn't udnerstand anything. I didn't know java or anything.
After about 2 months or so of frustration, I found the official tutorial on oracle and started learning from that.
It was hard and I did not learn anything.
in 9th grade - 3 years ago - I took computer science as a math elective class. I learn java a bit slowly but I understand almost everything due to my past failed attemps giving me some foundation.
During the summer after 9th grade, I started learning python again. I got all the way up to classes and such and stopped because I couldn't understand OOP in python because noone could even begin to teach OOP with python. I felt inadequate so I temporary stopped (quit).
During 10th grade, I started to really learn java. I bought tons of books and used the official tutorial with various other websites, and after all of my hard work. I understand the basics of java.
Skip to now - 12th grade - I'm learning extensive OOP programming concepts with java and learn how to create GUI applications with awt and swing (holding off javafx for now).
I'm mostly self-taught despite going to classes for 2 years of computer science in highschool.
I just really want to say, through all of my 4-5 years of experience on and off of learning programming: If you don't understand something, come back to it later.
I read the elusive documentation (to a 12 year old me, very elusive) word for word and just went with it.
At the time, I didnt't know what a compiler or an interpreter was so I just wrote it all down on paper and did the calculations/instructions in my head and wrote down the results. (I couldn't tell if I had an error or not)
After about 2-3 weeks, I quit. I couldn't understand anything really. I had no idea what a class was or what a method did. About a year later, I heard of minecraft and started playing that. I heard it was made with java so I went on youtube (which I recently found existed) and watched java game development tutorials.
Needless to say, it was hard and I didn't udnerstand anything. I didn't know java or anything.
After about 2 months or so of frustration, I found the official tutorial on oracle and started learning from that. It was hard and I did not learn anything.
in 9th grade - 3 years ago - I took computer science as a math elective class. I learn java a bit slowly but I understand almost everything due to my past failed attemps giving me some foundation.
During the summer after 9th grade, I started learning python again. I got all the way up to classes and such and stopped because I couldn't understand OOP in python because noone could even begin to teach OOP with python. I felt inadequate so I temporary stopped (quit).
During 10th grade, I started to really learn java. I bought tons of books and used the official tutorial with various other websites, and after all of my hard work. I understand the basics of java.
Skip to now - 12th grade - I'm learning extensive OOP programming concepts with java and learn how to create GUI applications with awt and swing (holding off javafx for now).
I'm mostly self-taught despite going to classes for 2 years of computer science in highschool.
I just really want to say, through all of my 4-5 years of experience on and off of learning programming: If you don't understand something, come back to it later.