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Comment by lsiunsuex | Hacker News Reader

Neither of these 2 posts say how long you've been doing this work for.

Maybe your just using a language that doesn't relate to you? Have you tried writing in Java? PHP? Ruby? You might be a crappy C programmer but excel in Java.

I sucked in FoxPro but really excel at PHP and am getting pretty good at Obj-C. It's all a matter of how badly you want to learn something. PHP is my career, but I want to be an iOS developer. So everyday, I try. I fail often, but the more I've worked with the language, the better I've gotten and I struggle with it less now adays.

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+1 to this - try something else to try that you've not already tried, e.g. if you've only ever done C or Java before, why not branch out and try HTML+Javascript?

Just tinkering around with other stuff can be a fun & educational diversion.

> Neither of these 2 posts say how long you've been doing this work for.

Good point. I've been working since 2007. I think the last real new code I wrote was in 2010. Before that, I did something in 2007-2008-ish.

Mostly C/C++. I want to do something else, that's true. maybe android development or ML stuff. I've been reading about that but I don't think I have what it takes

I've come to believe that there are moments, for me, where I have accidentally attained some sort of threshold of knowledge where despite never measuring up to a task before, I revisit it for the 10th time, and this time, for some reason, I'm able to start making progress.

I'd keep reading, but also, just do some dead simple tutorials in whatever space you are interested in. Codecademy was a great motivator for me, because though I had read a ton, I hadn't managed to really accomplishing anything on my own. With their hand-holding I was suddenly genuinely understanding concepts that had been very fuzzy to me up to that point.

http://codecademy.com

Give it a shot :) Good luck!

> I've been reading about that but I don't think I have what it takes

There is no such thing has not having what it takes. We're fortunate in that you don't necessarily need a degree to excel in this industry. A recruiter asked me just the other week - "how have you gotten this far without a proper education? " - I didn't know how to answer her. What'd you mean, how? I worked my ass off, learned new things and every job I got I made sure it was a step forward, not backward.

It's impossible to learn a new language over night. But dedicate time to it and over a couple months / year - you might get good enough to use it at a real job.

Always make samples of work and store them somewhere. Start basic, and move gradually towards complex projects. Never know, maybe a startup comes of one of them...

I meant that it seems like i'm too dumb. it was like this in school, too. I remember in a networking class I was always bewildered at what the professor was saying and everyone else got. he used the socratic method of teaching; asking questions in a logical fashion. he didn't call on me after a while.

i do keep trying to read and learn about ML or any new tech, but it always seems like I'm clueless because there's more stuff I don't know or never knew about. it's never good enough to get a job. just thinking about it now makes me feel like a loser when i should feel excited at new knowledge. maybe i'm just burning out. i feel like I'm at the end of my life

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