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K_Kelly
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24 Feb 2017, 1:37 am

I have trouble with planning, executing things, and I have a lot of holes in my logical thinking. I suck with mathematics. But I always wanted to build something. I don't know if I can realistically be a programmer. I was thinking of wanting to take it up as a hobby.

I developed the habit of "language tutorial hopping" where I can't just stick with one language to learn. My reading comprehension ability for tutorials and books has declined.



ranthaman
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25 Feb 2017, 12:56 am

K_Kelly wrote:
I have trouble with planning, executing things, and I have a lot of holes in my logical thinking. I suck with mathematics. But I always wanted to build something. I don't know if I can realistically be a programmer. I was thinking of wanting to take it up as a hobby.

I developed the habit of "language tutorial hopping" where I can't just stick with one language to learn. My reading comprehension ability for tutorials and books has declined.


I beleive you can! I beleive you don’t have to be good with maths

I have generally been bad at and struggled with maths
I don’t know if I would say have trouble with planning or executing, but I also don’t plan much of what I code (might just be me, but it works out fine)

I'm in college for computer science programming concentration and I find the functional logistics to computer languages as much different, quicker and easier for me to grasp where as certain maths take a great effort to grasp.
It was the same with chemical equations, I find it a different type of thinking easier than maths, whereas for some reason physics math was horrendous to understand

For me at least, I beleive computer sciences as very simple to grasp the concepts of, i think it is great for visual learners and active learners because it can be done actively
it also doesn’t require a ton of reading like most subjects which is great if your an aweful reader as me

I say give it a try! Might be pleasantly surprise I certainly know I do love it


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hurtloam
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25 Feb 2017, 1:04 am

You won't know unless you try. There are free websites where you can learn.

https://www.freecodecamp.com

https://www.codecademy.com

This youtube channel is really good. He's got more videos than just the javascript ones.



horse of course
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25 Feb 2017, 12:47 pm

I think you can do it if you're determined enough. I had a lot of trouble with mathematics until I learnt how to program. You have to master abstraction to become a good programmer and that helps significantly with learning certain parts of mathematics. Just keep at it and don't give up.

There are a lot of bad resources out there though. It's probably best to steer clear from anything titled 'Learn x in y hours/days/weeks' and anything in the 'Dummies' series. Also, a lot of the tutorials online will show you how to do one particular thing but won't advance your understanding in a meaningful way. I would recommend something aimed at beginners from O'Reilly or the Head Start series if you like learning from books. Or if you don't have a budget to spend on books, I've heard good things about the 'Learn x the hard way' series, where x is a language.



K_Kelly
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25 Feb 2017, 7:45 pm

What is "abstraction" in programming terms?



horse of course
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26 Feb 2017, 7:28 am

This wikipedia article is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstracti ... ngineering)

It's basically a way of breaking a task into smaller more manageable pieces. But more than that it's about finding the right way to think about a problem. I like the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on abstraction in mathematics:

Quote:
Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extracting the underlying essence of a mathematical concept, removing any dependence on real world objects with which it might originally have been connected, and generalizing it so that it has wider applications or matching among other abstract descriptions of equivalent phenomena.


For me, I used to think in very concrete terms, I only understood things in terms of specific examples. Learning to 'scale the abstraction ladder', i.e. switch between different levels of abstraction when thinking about a problem, is something I found very useful from learning to program.

But don't worry too much about this concept, I was just mentioning one of the benefits of learning computer science I found useful.



saxgeek
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26 Feb 2017, 12:19 pm

I also tend to have a lot of trouble planning out how I would go about doing something. The best thing to do is to start out with smaller programming tasks and work your way up, like maybe start with a simple text-based Conway's Game of Life, and then a Tetris Game or a simple text editor. I also learn well from examples rather than just reading tutorials.



K_Kelly
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26 Feb 2017, 2:22 pm

What do you mean learning by examples than just by reading tutorials?