What should I do Before I give up programming?

A) 3 months is like nothing! I have been learning software engineering for like 9 years and still don't consider myself an expert.

B) You are not a walking reference book to remember everything. Everyone (including me) is constantly googling, especially doing real-world tasks. This is why StackOverflow et al. exist!

C) You are not a designer that creates good-looking web sites. You are an engineer that brings the designer's ideas into reality. May be you are a bad designer, but that doesn't mean you are a bad software engineer.

D) You don't need to repeat tutorials. You need to get the job done. If that requires you to watch a tutorial that's OK. This doesn't differ much from googling stuff.

E) You are getting fluent in language by getting used to it. And this requires a lot of time. Like a lot. Compare this to the real world: you can navigate through world with ease. But this didn't came to you in 3 months. You learned to walk, to talk, to manipulate things with your hands. All of this required several years! And here how you done it: you touched this and that object, rotated, throwed, picked it up, looked at it at every angel, bite, sniff; done this with hundreds of real-world objects and now you are "fluent" in real world. You have experienced all the spectrum of things that gave you skills that is need for you to be able to, for example, go to a grocery store. There is SO much more to experience in life, but at least you already can go shopping by yourself. Same with programming languages. You need to look at every construction at every angel, try and fail, and finally get used to the language (and languages in general). Moreover, this works for everything: math, physics, programming, video games, guitar, chess, etc.

So, don't lose hope man. You will master it if willing to sacrifice enough time.

Definitely this. I have been programming for over 10 years at this point, and some of the points the OP made resonated with me. It is important to learn and practice self-compassion and realize being a programmer is a lifelong journey of learning and being wrong. That is what makes it so awesome.

Some of the best PMs I've worked with had CS or similar degrees, but switched to PM because they didn't get the enjoyment or satisfaction out of software development. But, because they understood the concepts, they were much easier to communicate with about technical skills.

Do you have people skills? Do you enjoy working with people to hash out details and then someone else does the work? That might be an option to pursue. Salaries aren't in the same league though.

Otherwise, also look for programming adjacent jobs where you can develop your programming over time and then switch at some point. In-house IT, QA, system admin (if that still exists as a job category), some customer support but only if you're empowered and not just picking scripted answers. Smaller business are more flexible, and you'll have more opportunities to do things outside your job description that help you develop.

Front end web development is an ever revolving carousel of pain.

20 years ago I was in the same place as you but with Enterprise Java.

I stuck with simpler environments where my ability to write and test code worked and code bases could be kept simpler.

You can consider switching to “backend” programming, manipulate data and databases with python. Build APIs with Ruby on Rails. Help business automat some software workflows with Autohotkey.

There are a million niches in software, try another.

What he said.

I took a 3 year break from front-end and when I came back, everything had changed.

Nobody understands React because it doesn't make sense. It breaks all the rules of programming all the time. E.g. calling `useState` multiple times with different (or the same!) arguments and getting different things back. Hooks are an abomination.

tl;dr it's not your fault, everyone in JS is struggling the same way until they eventually memorize the magic incantations. Don't let that stop you.

>E.g. calling `useState` multiple times with different (or the same!) arguments and getting different things back

That's also the case with random(), time(), and in general any inpure function. Hardly "rule breaking".

Sure, but in those cases it's inherent complexity, not made-up and unnecessary complexity.

Well, useState solves a problem too...

React itself doesn't bother me as much as the tooling around frontend development. I'm looking at you webpacker...

What you have described is frontend web development, not 'programming'. The latter is a vast discipline with myriad applications, frontend being just one of them, and possibly the worst to get into.

Throw away all of that Web garbage and explore other spaces. Gamedev never gets old.

Yeah I agree... Front end web dev isn't particularly programming. Especially not "degree in computer science" programming. Unless something has changed in academics I don't think CS degrees are touching anything front end and it's all backend languages, algorithms, math etc. Front end is more akin to technical schools and diplomas, boot camps, etc. I think this may be one cause for OPs disappointment and struggles.

The web has the strong advantage of being an enormous field built loosely on JavaScript. I'm not sure that's a perfect beginner language but at least it's not C++.

Games dev is a brutally difficult niche. Or at least it used to be, maybe these days the engine part is off the shelf and the programming a bit closer to storytelling. I've been out of that industry for a while.

There are beginner-friendly engines like Love2D. Getting started with something like that should be straightforward provided one has basic programming notions. Otherwise, learning C (or C++) and exploring the internals for yourself will teach you a lot more about programming and data structures than using whatever web technology webdevs are using to inflict pain upon themselves these days.

https://love2d.org/

3 months.

I'll tell you, I started with web dev in late 90s. At the time there was no CSS, most JavaScript was called DHTML and you worked with what was available at the time (eg. tables for layout). There was also a full-front browser war going on, no web standard at all.

Just to be proficient with CSS, it took me years. A steady but very slow learning curve. And CSS was painful at the time (no flexbox, no standard box model). It took serious efforts to just render a PNG image with alpha!

ES6 is syntactic sugar! It will give you some productive advantage but you should focus on how to solve problems first, no matter the tools under your belt.

Even today I google everyday docs for the most used or basic functions I can't remember a parameter order or what they returns, this has nothing to do with your programming skills.

Today front-end is a very vast landscape, with an absurdly growing ecosystem. No way you can master all of it in 3 months. Also, we're past the point were you can (or must) follow every paradigm or framework, there are no common best practices and you must make important choices, some of them will make or break your career, or at least will push you back.

3 months will just get your feet wet. If you really want to do this, you'll have to find a junior position and spend the first years of your career just learning, while working. No matter how long, intense or immersive, no course or tutorial can give you the experience you need.

You seem to be sad due to lack of progress. When I got started, I spent way more than 3 months to get a grasp of the basics.

But I never felt tired because I really enjoyed the process. So my question is, do you enjoy the process of tinkering ?(which has got nothing to do with your degree or background) Or are you learning to code for some other reason?

If not, you should switch your line of work. If yes, then you should get an internship. Learning from others is the fastest way, atleast when you are just getting started.

So? Do you enjoy it? Because that's how it is and that's how it is going to be. It take hundreds, thousands hours and even if you make progress, it will still feel like you don't know enough.

If you enjoy it, just give yourself more time. If not then...

I don't know if this will help, but the best way to become a professional programmer is to have a gun to your head; not literally of course. Deadlines, money, pressure and more complexity than you're comfortable with have a way of focusing the mind. A love of building complex things out of virtually nothing helps too.

Forget web development, build a product if you've got it in you. Otherwise there's plenty of other things to do out there.

When you do something successfully, how do you feel about it? Do you feel like doubling down on the harder stuff?

Being fluent in tools is one thing, but the creative rewards are the most important, if you can feel them. If not so much, hey, you're just not cut out for it. Tons of people aren't and it doesn't mean they're not smart or hard-working. It's just not their thing. There are plenty of other great things to do! Like someone mentioned, project management, scrum master, product management all can make use of your education so its not a waste at all.

So, if that's you, I don't think advice like "oh don't use that tool use this other one" are going to help you. Don't waste more time on something you're just not that into. Programming and engineering in general involve lifetime learning, and you need motivation to do that. Without the creative "juice" that's going to get old fast.

I can feel with you. Me, too, have problems with remembering what have been coded and why. Also, I suffer in creativity - but not in logic. So, for my part, I concentrate more on logical thinking and algorithm tasks. May be you too have some skill.

But, reconciling, for me it was distraction. Just like do one thing, then do the other thing, then forget about the first thing. And a lack of understanding data structures - I did not study CS. I overcame this by training on sites like codewars and thinking in the programming language at anytime ("How would the logic for the traffic lights be programmed?" while walking on the streets).

But this still do not help you with the creativity. I somehow have the feeling you lerned a lot, but it was all too fast pushed trough. Also react and bootstrap and things like that - they can be seen as own programming languages, with own logic, sometime syntax. You have to learn other poeple's thinkwise for being able to use their frameworks. So, thats may be a point, too. The different syntaxes of JS, CSS, HTML, bootstrap, react -> this all have to be mastered. Its a multi-dimesional problem. You need practice, practice, practice - codewars? You need to practice switching the languages instantly. As an example, one who learned 2nd language and perfectly speaks it starts to learn a 3rd language and stops speaking the 2nd until the 3rd is mastered. That one will have a difficult time to switch from the 3rd to the 2nd instantly. Its a fact. If he starts to train thinking the 2nd and the 3rd languaged simultaniously, it won't be a problem at all after a few days/weeks. What I want to say:

- do codewars on pure JS - do codewars on pure HTML - do codewars on pure CSS

Do them simultaneously, starting with JS. Because, with JS the other two can be generated :)

Thats my experience and a cheer up! If you don't see any future in programming, then try to find a job where straight thinking is needed and use your programmatical thinking to solve other things. Web is not everything :)

I think a lot of what you wrote are possible signs that programming isn't for you but it depends. What you listed is aimed at frontend work. Maybe you should be setting your goal somewhere else in programming. Especially if you have the learning resources for the frontend stuff but you're still failing to make progress with it. Although learning sometimes can be best at a job that's forcing you to make progress everyday. I personally don't think programming is for everyone and I think that some people just push themselves into the career for financial reasons. They're probably going to live a life of despair attached to them for it. Unless they eventually switch to management.

Programming itself is a lifelong pursuit. People can argue all day long about what constitutes a good programmer. To say the least the skillset is very wide and very deep with a lot of breathing room to find your place.

I will say that if you don't enjoy trying to learn new things, you might not enjoy this field. You are really forced to "learn" new things all of the time. That being said, you might be able to settle on a particular programming language and find places that are not cutting edge but are stuck on "old" tech.

Really though this isn't a job that your can just phone in...

Your post is unclear. Have you been doing a programming bootcamp thing for three months or have you been working professionally for three months?

If you've done a bootcamp thing and not worked with anyone, my baseline expectation would be that you can do nothing. As in, I'd expect you to be unable to write a calculator program in JavaScript.

If you're working with other people, listen to them.

Programming is not a very easy game to play. The bootcamp marketing rather glosses over that.

Programming and web dev are challenging disciplines that take a lot of time to learn and feel competent with. Years not months. You need to seriously realign your expectations. Lower them. You will not build beautiful things after 3 months of bootcamps. You can either persevere or quit, but right now your biggest challenge is a mental one, not a technical one. Good luck.

> I keep forgetting how I built something time and again.

This happens to everyone. If you keep building the same thing then you will remember. For example, if you build your own personal site then you might forget. But if you had clients and built personal sites every week/month, then you would obviously not forget :)

CSS: CSS sucks. Try using Tailwind on a project and think of it as higher level language that compiles down to CSS, just like programming languages compile down to C or machine code. Ironically, plain CSS began to make more sense for me after I started using Tailwind.

React: This might help useState and useEffect click. Think of a man who weighs himself each week and records the change. The first week he weighs 70kg. The next week he weighs 75kg. The third week he weighs 80kg. This is his 'state' and each time he records his weight he uses setState to do it.

Now every time he weighs himself he needs to decide what to do about it. Once he hits 80kg he thinks enough is enough and decides it's time to lose weight. This is a side effect of him gaining weight. In react terms this is useEffect. useEffect runs every time he records his weight.

If you had to change a bunch of files when you changed useEffect, it's because the effects of those effects meant your program had to change for it to run successfully. For example, if this guy wanted to lose weight, he might need to increase the amount of exercise he did, or eat healthier, and so you have to find the parts of the programs that control that and have them respond accordingly.

> 3) After watching tutorials, I can't repeat what they've done in tutorial without watching the tutorial of project even though I understand each and every step they do in project.

It doesn't matter if you've been coding 2 months or 20 years, you're still going to be looking up things in documentation every day because you can't remember the exact syntax or whether a function works in place or returns a new array.

I can remember having similar feelings to you at one point and someone pointed me in the direction of this YouTube series. It helped me breakthrough the barriers I was having at the time, maybe it will work for you too:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKQ5LYb497AZIZe9dBWy8...

One more thing: have a go at building a blog using Astro. You can use multiple different JS frameworks in the same site, so you could write the same component in React, Vue, Svelte, Solid etc and see how each framework essentially lets you do the same thing but a bit differently. Seeing the same thing from all these different angles may help make the underlying concept click a bit better.

Would you be mad if you weren't a world class guitarist after 4 months of practice? If you couldn't discuss politics in Cantonese after 3 months of classes?

React is hard, and if you don't know ES6 inside out, you'll never learn it. Slow down and have realistic expectations.

The key to learning programming or anything is not to stop. Whatever you have learned will serve you well for the next 3 months. Everything is a building block.

Perhaps frontend isn't the easiest area to start for everyone. Try a backend language before you give up.

It could be that your coding bootcamp is just going too fast -- and making you feel overwhelmed and discouraged.

It could be that your progress is just fine, but your expectations are too high (or the people around you aren't validating what you're accomplishing).

Please find a mentor. An actual person. Courses and tutorials will only get you so far.

Ideally, look for a job that does pair programming. Or a team that is willing to teach you.

No one is competent after 3 months. It takes 2 years, to be a mediocre developer at best.

3 months would not be nearly enough to internalize the concepts you want to learn even for a very experienced developer (who just never tried web dev before). In your case, this is waaay too soon to jump to any conclusions IMO.

As for CSS just make the page that looks exactly like the design.

Download some free .psd templates and just implement them.

This way you get rid of problem with creating esthetics and focus on technical aspect.

You don’t need to be an expert in technologies to work in them. Keep that in mind and know that a lot of any job is just having confidence and putting in the work.

did you try to get an internship or entry level job? you have a degree and appropriate entry level training, you dont need to do any more projects or tutorials

the actual experience will come from working on specific small tasks assigned to you + you should receive further guidance and training from senior colleagues

getting your foot into the door is not easy, but right now you should be slinging your CV left and right

3 months is literally nothing, why immediately jump to giving up, you've barely begun?

Also it seems like you've started learning React without properly knowing HTML, CSS, JS, please also remember that you have more options than just React, html, css, js, frontend, web dev.

> Friends who were weaker than me in conventional college studies and academia have done jobs and internships

Because being good in school doesn't mean you are good in the real world.

You can be a tech recruiter. But then you got a lot of competition there too.

don't give up, just keep programming as a hobby instead of relying on it for your main source of income. work a crappy job that pays the bills but allows for you to pay for tinkering and hacking as a hobby

3 months is not a long time to learn web development! I made my first web site in 1995 and I've been doing it ever since. On a bad day I still get flustered with React and CSS. How much of a skilled trade like plumbing or carpentry or welding or being an electrician could your learn in 3 months?

The "ultimate" web developer has a wide range of skills that almost nobody has. For instance, the ultimate web developer knows some systems programming (will need it when things go terribly wrong) but also is a talented artist that can not only draw images but can also make systems of images, colors, fonts and other assets that combine as required, create 2d- and 3d- animations, etc. (Thank God people decided it isn't cool for web sites to play sounds or you might have to be a musician and/or sound engineer too!)

There is a level of skill in graphic design that is less than that where you understand how to pick colors, pick fonts, make harmonious layouts. It's a subject I am still learning: from time to time I have a rather serious "graphics" hobby like printing a series of decorative cards, photography projects, etc. I learned a huge amount when I had to to an accessibility overhaul for the site I work on, not only in terms of accessibility standards but how to think about graphic design. (e.g. when you pick colors, the first thing to think about is how bright or dark they are, any design that makes sense in color makes sense in black and white. I am a fan of Ansel Adam's writings on photography for this reason. In fact I learned a lot about composition when I picked up a book on portrait photography the other day.)

CSS is hard. It has that graphic design knowledge as a background, yet few graphic designers have the discipline of programming that CSS really demands. You can get hung up on the details of selectors, inheritance, padding, borders, margin collapsing, all that. You won't really be in control until you know how to look up anything in the official docs, but those docs are sprawling

https://www.w3.org/TR/css-2022/#module-classification

I count at least 50 documents that are "normative references" right there! (Clearly not something you can master in 3 months)

On top of that there is the complexity of "CSS frameworks" built on top of CSS. All of them have additional concepts to learn but they don't absolve you from having a complete understanding of what lies beneath.

To pause for a sec, note that web devs usually work in teams -- so you don't have to go it alone. A designer might make you comps in Photoshop and it is your job to write HTML and CSS to make it look like that. Hopefully you have a tester, sysadmin, marketing people, etc. If I had my way somebody would plan how CSS is used systematically to help multiple designers and devs do the right thing.

Then, React. I feel completely in control with components I write myself, but the sheer number of third-party components that you might choose or that you might encounter in React code somebody else wrote.

You'd image a widget set like

https://reactstrap.github.io/?path=/story/home-installation-...

or

https://mui.com/material-ui/

would let you largely ignore HTML and CSS and you might really make some apps where the "XML" looks like a desktop application but marketing some day will require you to customize these radically or you will encounter some application that mixes three widget sets and seven other third-party components and you need to understand all of that stuff to be in control.

Sometimes you are more in control, sometimes you aren't. When you're not in control you appear to make rapid progress sometimes but you also get stuck and things that you'd think would be quick take a long time and you know... That's what is.

But... We are not in perfect control and many businesses make many minor and major mistakes in their infrastructure, still make money, still pay coders.

I'd say though that there is something wrong with React. I like how React can draw any application I imagine, particularly with

https://docs.pmnd.rs/react-three-fiber/getting-started/examp...

but it does not have a real plan for how information flows in your application. I like the way props flow downwards, but those components that pass context are a disaster. React provides you with tools you can use to implement your own plan... Or maybe barrel ahead without a plan which won't be bad if you are lucky and your app is small, otherwise things may get worse and worse and things the boss thinks look easy are really very very hard and you'd better get control!

So your 3 mo bootcamp is just the beginning of learning the trade. You can get a job in the industry already but if you do you may find it is SNAFU in many places, it is not unusual for a developer to take several weeks to be able to put together a dev workstation, build and run the system. Ideally you get in with people who model good behavior but even then you will have times you are feeling unproductive because you are not productive because of situations not entirely in your control.

Other than that you can do side, personal, family and friends projects. Find some answers to the above problems that let you make the kind of app that you want to make, try to spend as little time as possible learning frameworks and languages and instead focus on a small toolbox where you can pound out little projects where you feel in control and that will build your confidence and skills until you are ready to swim with the sharks.

Keep suffering upward!