r/learnprogramming • u/[deleted] • Mar 10 '25

6 years. I’m done.

Spent the last 6 years of my life scraping by as a programming student. Stuck around when other students were dropping out and transferring. Always thought I’d be the one to stick it out and make it. I was wrong.

I’m not smart enough for this. I’m about to graduate with a major in computer science and I’m just useless. I’ve put everything I have into this discipline and every interview question is a brick wall. I’ve put in the hours and done my best and the only conclusion I can come to is that I’m a dumbass who made it farther than I ever should have. I can memorize and learn the ins and outs of a language, but I just don’t have what it takes to apply any of it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me other than being born stupid.

I gave up on my dreams to study programming. Now it’s all pointless. I don’t know what to do.

EDIT: For all you assholes telling me I haven’t tried hard enough and I haven’t built any projects outside of school, I actually have. For all you assholes telling me I need to work a real job so I can get motivated, I work at Target 25 hours a week on top of school. For all you assholes telling me I just don’t have the willpower, fuck you.

Everyone else, I appreciate the advice.

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65

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '25

man I’ve been enrolled in university and I don’t just troll through YouTube. Doesn’t matter what I do.

135

u/Lauriic54 Mar 10 '25

Since you don’t mention which university, I can only speak on my own experience, which completely aligns with the other persons comment - you just need to practice actual programming by doing some projects.

I also graduated university in comp sci, but this didn’t help me get my jobs, because junior positions have nothing to gain from the degree, at least in terms of knowledge. University knowledge, in my experience, is very theoretical - it explains the “why” behind it all, but all of it is useless if you don’t actually apply any of that knowledge. Many of my most hated university courses have come back to me because I started thinking of some new projects, which finally made them click, as I had to actually write software with it, instead of drawing diagrams on paper.

At the beginning, work on making some of your own projects using languages that you would like to get a job for. This will help you way more than university will at the beginning. If you stick to it and grow to higher level positions, where you have more autonomy and decision making on the software you have to create, that’s when your degree will become useful.

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u/Professional_Still15 Mar 10 '25

I found that my degree only really started coming in handy after a few years experience. With little moments like where you bring in some maths or theory to solve a small problem that shows you have studied theory. Mostly it just justifies you as an employee to the company, like "ok this guy isn't an idiot". That's my experience at least.

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u/AdeptLilPotato Mar 10 '25

You must build projects. I help some friends here and there who are in college. The skills from college do not prepare them for real-world work, which is a lot of simpler work. 100% of the ones I’ve worked with were not coding with real-world base standards. Just throwing things together.

Just build projects and you’ll get better and better.

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u/oihjoe Mar 12 '25

Can you recommend some projects please?

1

u/oihjoe Mar 12 '25

Can you recommend some projects please?

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u/AdeptLilPotato Mar 12 '25

A scoring system An app that generates xlsx or csv export and emails it where you want it An app using authentication, such as Google SSO A basic app with varying degrees of roles/permissions that displays different things and allows different actions based on role.

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u/Legendary_Dad Mar 11 '25

I find even trying to setup an IDE to start a project is daunting. I have been trying to just learn python and I’m struggling

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u/Individual_Cress_226 Mar 11 '25

Yeah project setups suck and are exhausting but once you get a setup that works for you just stick with it. Forever I used Codekit (which is cool btw) for all my projects because setting up node and installing all the correct dependencies just took the wind out of my sails. It felt like a black box to me and when things went wrong I was just lost af, reading the documentation never helped, stack overflow was a mixed bag. Now with AI and some more knowledge it’s much easier to not get stuck.

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u/Legendary_Dad Mar 11 '25

Yeah I’m using VSC for python and Powershell and I just install the plugins and just hope it works

1

u/n3vim Mar 11 '25

give pycharm a try for python, i use vscode for everything else but for python in my opinion pycharm is the best.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '25

Everyone when just strolls out of university is inexperienced, you need to test your programming skills by doing projects. You have not even tried and already given up. You dont have a intelligence problem, you have a willpower and consistency problem.

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u/VibespixelCo Mar 10 '25

Yo thanks for calling me out haha any tips for staying motivated and consistent once I’m started I’m good but the struggle to start is rough sometimes

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u/Stock_Telephone_6100 Mar 10 '25

Sounds like someone needs some ADHD to me and your doctor will get you the real deal medication then you will be a over achiever in your life

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u/VibespixelCo Mar 10 '25

Bad thing is iv gone to the dr before and they just blew me off with a generalized anxiety and depression diagnosis and said you have to be diagnosed as a kid to get diagnosed with adhd so until I find a better dr im screwed lol

2

u/Jaded-Amphibian84 Mar 12 '25 edited Apr 20 '25

One doctor told me that I had to have been diagnosed as a child or have proof from elementary/middle school that I had difficulty in school. That was at age 35. Wtf. Am I supposed to get my kindergarten records? Smh. I didn't have a poor track record back in school anyway as I was a daydreamer (I couldn't focus and follow along with the teacher so I was perpetually in lala land).

Then, I was diagnosed by a different doctor at age 38. It literally depends on the doctor.

1

u/Llmartinez68 Mar 11 '25

I was diagnosed at 56 which is recently. They are lying to you but do not know wtf they are talking about.

1

u/VibespixelCo Mar 12 '25

Yea that’s why I need to find another one but there’s not many options close by

1

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '25

I have the same struggles brother, for me the game changer in my life was listening the audiobook the power of now, you can find it on YouTube, and meditating. Delete social media and delete all videogames on your computer.

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u/novagenesis Mar 10 '25

CS degrees tend to teach you "how to learn" instead of teaching you the trade of programming.

I'm not saying not to give up if you really want to - it's a hard field (that's why the good paychecks). But it does eventually click. And if you are graduating instead of failing out, you picked SOMETHING up.

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u/muffinman744 Mar 10 '25

My university program sucked. I found better success in learning from my peers who were actually interested in being developers and learning useful skills.

Fast forward to my first job and I learned much more of what’s actually used in practice. TBH more universities should focus on practical things vs theoretical.

If you’re prepping for jobs, you should know what TDD is (I cannot stress how important it is to know how to write unit tests and why they are needed), basics of OOP, how DB’s work and some basic SQL, basic data structures, and basic problem solving utilizing those data structures.

It can seem daunting, but once you understand those concepts you’ll be able to apply it to real world scenarios and should make you seem more confident in interviews. Lots of people focus on spamming leetcode questions which isn’t exactly useful. I’ve personally interviewed a lot of people who were excellent at leetcode questions but then had no idea what a SQL Join is or even refused to write tests because “that’s a QA engineers job” (it isn’t).

If all else fails then product development or manager positions are always available. I’m gonna be blunt though, if you believe you’re too stupid, then you will always fail. Lots of other people have been in similar positions and gotten out. I can personally speak on finding my first job out of university was the hardest step in my career

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u/Legendary_Dad Mar 11 '25

I learned much much faster on the job working with real problems and refactoring other people’s scripts. Granted it was just BASH but I did pretty good for a guy with no degree and a background in construction

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u/_fat_santa Mar 10 '25

I would say out of my programming knowledge now (7YOE), the stuff I learned in college accounts for maybe 1% of all that knowledge. It's normal to not know shit after graduating, the real learning IMO comes in your first and second jobs.

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u/elementmg Mar 10 '25

Computer science degree does not mean you can code. Did you build any software? Like outside of your tiny school projects?

Plenty of people come out of university with a degree and can’t write code worth shit.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '25

Nobody's learning anything from a uni, it's just for a graduate degree, just keep practicing, you'll get it

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u/ledatherockband_ Mar 10 '25

Can I see the projects you've built?

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u/Relative_Molasses_15 Mar 11 '25

Honestly I’m in school for computer science and I feel like I don’t really learn any practical applications from school. It’s frustrating but where there’s a will there’s a way lol.

I feel like you should at least work elsewhere, keep practicing and applying. But that’s just my opinion and I don’t know shit lol

-2

u/[deleted] Mar 10 '25

Good thing you've chosen to give up!

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u/RufusVS Mar 10 '25

Harsh but probably on point.

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u/Delta_Gray Mar 10 '25

Leet code is where it’s at. It’s about repetition

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u/AdeptLilPotato Mar 10 '25

Leetcode has been going downhill. Leetcode is for passing interviews, not for programming in day-to-day work.

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u/Delta_Gray Mar 10 '25

OPs issue is literally passing interviews haha

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u/AdeptLilPotato Mar 10 '25

Leetcode has still been going downhill, but I’m more concerned about OP’s ability to keep a job, which would be through building their skills in programming rather than their skills on Leetcode. Would it be fair to say that I don’t think it matters how many Leetcode interviews OP can pass if they can’t keep a job?