Programmer at 35 years of age ask Quora why he still sucks at after 10 years.

18    17 Apr 2015 00:51 by u/gnosticmike

Age 35, 10 years programming experience but I still suck at it. Why?  

Best Answer except: Zoran Bogicevic, software developer, 124 upvotes

You, my friend, have a bad case of procrastination. Main indication - allowing dark side to attract you [Facebook, forums, porn]. Luckily, curable.

You've got too used to the fact that everything you've done so far - you've done it with great ease. You didn't have to focus for extended period of time, because you only needed short time for high-end results.

A I see it from where I'm standing, you can do two things:

1] Deal with procrastination [this would be great, otherwise it would be such a waste of talent], or 2] Change industry [be very, very cautious - can you guarantee to yourself that you will not procrastinate in banking too? Or Interior Design? Or, you name it. Plus, it would be a huge waste and shame].

6 comments

8 u/DanteHicks 17 Apr 2015 04:55

That's a great wake-up call for me! Not that I procrastinate all the time, but of course I let my focus slip onto less important stuff every now and then.

3 u/nroslm 17 Apr 2015 19:02

I feel like I always start 5 things at once and can never concentrate on what I'm working on as I'm thinking about the 4 other things.

1 u/123456 19 Apr 2015 04:18

I tried programming for a while, then I quit, and went into game development. The problem with programming is there aren't many affordable resources that teach you how to bring it all together; how to conceptualize the ideas into your head, and how to navigate all the different languages. Unfortunately, people who teach programming tend not to be very good teachers. They have too many expectations of beginners, and see things through their own limited perspective. Then again this could be a problem with any subject, I suppose, but I found it to be prevalent in programming.

1 u/gnosticmike [OP] 19 Apr 2015 04:20

I usually try to learn the basic concepts on my own but it does require some type of logic , basic math, or standard class on computers to actually understand loops, integers, and adders. And to understand compiling, that deserves more than one semester. Don't give up! I'm sure there are people here that would love to continue to encourage you at /v/programming.

0 u/Pawn 15 May 2015 07:51

I'm trying to learn Erlang, and it's very hard as I'm a total noob and every day I feel like I'm way in over my head. There is just SO MUCH. Then the learning resources are just books and websites, no fancy videos like for C++, and you gotta do all of it yourself. It's a vertical climb all the way up. I can't even do the most of the exercises in my book because the book was written for experienced programmers wanting to give erlang a whack, not noobs.

The reddit community is very small, but do provide some help. Not noob friendly at all.