Courses you struggle with

I hear you Jonathan. I can relate to your whole "Sometime it's....." paragraph!

Right now for me it's object oriented programming. I'm in the Python Techdegree. I thought I already had a pretty good handle on Python, but that was just procedural programming. But writing classes of objects, otoh, is something that just turns my brain into a pile of Lego's. I understand the syntax, but not the purpose, the mode of thinking that goes into the organizing and structuring of OOP coding. I looked back at a few other python courses and tutorials I did and I noticed I did just fine till it got to OOP.

I'm on Windows, too, and sometimes you'll run into courses (not just Treehouse!) where they treat installing and/or running things on anything but a Mac or Linux as sort of an afterthought.

So yeah, count me in your boat. I can't get past the 2nd project of my Techdegree because I'm struggling just like you. Not just floating through but floundering. And those negative self-talk type of words always nagging ("fail", "give up", "just not for me") -- oh man!

About the only answers I can give you are: keep up your distaste for words like "fail" or "give up", they're poison. And also, if you're getting stuck, seek out tutorials, classes, advice from outside sources. And good look , and keep at it.

Hi there! My desktop wallpaper is truly nerdy. It says: "Programmers never die! When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place." And there's a reason that I chose this one

Sure, I hit courses where I get errors setting things up or things I don't understand 100%. But I find that if I repeat the material and find outside resources eventually I'll have that light bulb moment I've been looking for.

Jeff Hartl and I are very similar I think. I come from a procedural programming background. And learning OOP has felt very abstract, but I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on it. So I'd like to recommend a book that has helped me a great deal titled "Design Patterns Explained" by Alan Shalloway and James R. Trott. I think you might find it's very much worth the time and effort to read it.

As for the errors when installing things in Windows, I agree. I've also encountered this. So to counter this I installed Ubuntu as a dual boot and have found that if it gives an error it's more likely that someone can say how to fix the error as opposed to some weird Windows error.

Hang in there!

I hear ya, and I would say that although Treehouse is great, its not the only place you should be learning from. There are some great gulp tutorials on scotch,io and youtube, if you are having trouble with any logic stuff MIT courseware is great for that. I've been learning and seen you around the Wordpress forum here a lot in the past. Keep it up, and if your not understanding the course here use other resources out there, its okay, also let me say its great to see the MOD under your icon. Remember someone else has to say you deserve that, not everyone is a moderator. So congrats on that. The only time you fail is when you give up. Don't give up, but use other resources available to you. Treehouse is great and I own my career to it, but it's not the only place I learn, and I'm fine with that. if you need help remember you can ask here or take a look at stackoverflow, we are here to help.

Javascript isn't that bad. You just need a push thats all. It takes time like anything.

It takes perseverance. Javascript is still my favorite language, even though it has some quirks.

As for errors on windows. i bought myself a used mac. No more issues. If not you can always play with javascript vanill and jquery. You can apply those things elsewhere. You can also use cloud9 .io but you have to disable antivirus to download packages.

Antivirus always hinders development.

var alive = true;
while(alive) {
    keepOnHacking();
}

Not much more to add on the great answers you've already received but I'm kind of in the same boat friend especially on the MEAN course! Keep your head up, the MEAN course and Angular are super tough.

I basically resigned myself to just watching THEN going back through each course to follow along. Of course I also used to use a PC (ubuntu) and the errors on installs are maddening, I bought a Mac just for coding but a cheaper route would be an old mac mini. You should be able to find one on ebay or craigslist if you're interested!

I don't know when you started your journey to learn coding, but have you ever stopped along the way and tried to write down all the things you've learned in a span of 1-3 months? Terms, concepts, technologies? I think you'd really surprise yourself if you took even 5 minutes to try to do this- when you'd see how much progress you've actually made. It seems like you are always pushing yourself to learn something new, which is great, but sometimes you have to take a good long moment and really soak up your accomplishments. Doing this will help you see that you have grown and you have learned and that you should be proud of what you've accomplished.

Full-Stack JS is tough. But as long as you want to, I am sure you'll be able to get through it.

As for me, I am unable to complete the jQuery course. I don't get it. It's very hard, I have tried books and other online sources and for some reason, I cannot seem to get jQuery.