Feeling overwhelmed.

Erin,

I have taken a course in Java at a community college, and have now studied several other languages. With Java and other object-oriented approaches, I still find myself asking why the answers elude me. They do come with time and they do make sense eventually. Not sure I can offer advice, but more commiseration on this.

I would say that learning javascript and jQuery helped me feel like I was working on what I want my application to do, with feedback on a web page, rather than trying to wrap my head around the mechanics of the objects themselves. I know this does not apply to Android development, but it could be some therapy.

Best of luck!

Hi Erin Leathers , I can testify programming is not easy, but it is rewarding. Some people will tell you it is super easy but we don't know their background, we don't know their beginning either. It is easy once you know something and how it works but the beginning is probably not easy. When you study a programming language that involves a lot of terms or things you have to know, you'll probably start feeling overwhelmed, that you are trying really hard but the language seems to be beyond yourself. That's a fact; most programming languages are beyond most of us and with the daily advances it can be hard to keep up on somethings. When you feel overwhelmed it is good you start evaluating yourself. I'll share some few tips on how I go around it when I feel overwhelmed. It might help you in some way.

1. Are you too hard on yourself? Maybe you are expecting to finish something sooner than you are currently capable of? Sometimes we have a lot in our plate and we are unable to come up with right estimate to things, when you are learning don't feel bad about that. It is totally okay. Learning takes time, learning never ends anyways.

2. Are you having a good road map or you are moving from beginner to advance lectures and then back to intermediate and then again trying to make an advance app but then you think you need more java. Try to have a plan with a learning curve that seems almost seamless to you. It makes the learning experience more pleasurable.

3. Take a break. Sometimes we are tired or burnt out, our brain just needs a time off from coding. It does not mean you hate coding if you take a break, it means you understand that to learn you need to have a healthy mindset and a brain that can absorb information with less effort. Stepping away for a while also helps you see mistakes you might have missed. There is a little trap here though, if you are afraid or intimidate by what you are learning you might find the best excuses to not return back to it. So set a time limit to the break you take and be disciplined.

4. You can look around for books, or browse other sites, video tutorials and see if you can get more knowledge in what you are trying to learn. Somethings don't work for all, that applies to books, courses and videos. The same way some lecturers were harder to understand at school, that same way some authors, teachers etc. might not fit your learning style or make things way complicated than it should be, which means you'll have to do some additional research before you find the type of books that you might like to read. If you want to try the dummies series, I suggest you try to check for preview of some pages of it on amazon, a library or a bookstore before considering if it is good for you to purchase it.

5. There are times when you'll have to skip some things. Everything doesn't have to go from A - Z. If you understand the next chapter better, skip the one you are at and revisit it after you are done with the next. If you still can't get it that means you probably need to do some research to understand what you don't or stay more on certain places before moving on.

6. Go from theory into practice. When you start practicing things on your own then you'll get to know what you understand and what you don't.

7. Lastly, understand you are learning. The purpose of learning something comes from you not knowing enough about it. If we knew everything about something there will be no need to study it further. Study with the mindset of - this is a new information for my brain and it is understood that some things might look confusing because I am getting to know about this topic now.

There is a quote by Martin Luther King that says “If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

If you do your best to understand the things you don't when you program and you succeed in that, you'll go a long way, so keep up the good work!

I wrote an article about my successes learning to code using Treehouse and other online learning resources. Two things I think can help you here: one is understanding that learning to code is not an easy task, but is possible with the right goal structure and realistic expectations. The other is like you said: write an app you think is fun. It does not have to be something crazy complex, start with something small, like a number calculating function or a word counter. I learned the fastest when I had a project outside the course material to apply what I was learning. Hope this helps a bit

Erin;

First, welcome to Treehouse! I think the vast majority of us have been right where you are now. As Mr. Hilliard states, learning this "coding thing" is not super easy and can definitely be overwhelming. Like many things it takes practice and expanding your coding comfort zone by small increments and not large leaps at a time. I would echo as well the come up with a list of items you would like to do for fun or at work or whatever. If they are your projects you can create them as you see fit, learn what you want to learn about a particular subject matter, and then decide to leave the project "unfinished" and come back to it later, or continue on.

Let me give you an example and preface it by stating that I see in your profile you have done only Java and Android courses here and I don't know about your web skills so hopefully this makes some sense.

One project that I wanted to do was to make a CMS from scratch in PHP/MySQL for a restaurant environment. It would need to keep track of recipes and menus to be able to display on the "homepage" of the restaurant site, the staff could log into the site, update the menu and then the world could see what was in store for them that evening. Took a couple of hours to get the guts of the site worked out, functionally it does what it needs to, but it is ugly and the user interface is, um, lacking. I accepted that while I know a bit of CSS, JavaScript, etc. that for my restaurant CMS project I wasn't going to spend the extra time making the UX/UI perfect. Perhaps someday when Boven et al opens I will revisit the project and share it with the world, until then I got out of it what I wanted and nobody needs to get frustrated.

So, choose a task and go for it. I find Android development to be very rewarding and interesting as well. There are multiple tutorials on the internet for Android that you can walk through. I find a very educational exercise to be taking some plain old java code and converting it into an Android app. Coding Bat has a lot of Java coding exercises. Try combining them into an app.

Just my thoughts and keep on coding!

Ken

Hi guys an update I would like to share.

I took about a week break and started reading "Head First Java " and "Thinking in Java" .

I followed very closely did the practical exercises (Don't know why but I very much enjoyed coding in Notepad and working with command line) and came back tonight .

Picked up where I left off and now some stuff is making a lot more sense !! yay!

Thanks for the support ,

You guys are awesome !

Hi Erin!

I absolutely love that you posted this! This is a great example of what this forum can be used for, and by opening up this way, you encourage others to do the same. Thank you for your honesty!

Sorry to hear you are feeling frustrated. If I can help clarify and separate any of that mash-up of ideas that is happening please let me know. I want you having fun!

I've been reading a book lately called "Make It Stick" and I found a great summary article that I think will help address some of the feelings you are having, my favorite snippet being this:

"Learning is deeper and more durable when it's effortful," the authors write. "Learning that's easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow."

Hope that helps!

Also, please don't hesitate to ask any sort of question in the forum, it doesn't need to be related to a video or a course or anything. Here is an example about why we are using the "m" prefixed variable names.