I’ve been learning on and off about programming for 3 years now. Mostly front-end, html/css/js, for school projects. My degree isn’t in CS or IT, so projects that give the opportunity to code are scarce and often short. So I get that I may simply may not have enough hours in coding.
So I’m delighted to be taking CS50 as a Minor at the moment, this has given me the chance to sink a lot of hours in coding, and currently I am in week 5 Data Structures.
But every time I start on the problem sets, I feel overwhelmed and feel like I don’t understand anything. I have to Google/GPT the most basic of things. Even though I’ve been programming regularly the past 6 weeks, I don’t feel as if I have improved and I’m starting to doubt if this is a career for me.
In a year I would like to find a career in development. Have any of you felt this way? And what has helped you get rid of this imposter syndrome?
Just keep going.
Mood swings occur in any field. If you like the task of coding, problem solving and researching you are fine.
Everybody needs to look up stuff. The human brain was made to find patterns and think, not to store information indefinitely. For this we have made computers.
Try not to learn something by heart. But to hone your skills in doing/processing/solving things.
Looking at code and understanding it is much more appreciated than knowing specific algorithms.
Sure patterns are helpful and are actually necessary to be known. But those will come with time.