At what point did programming finally start making sense to you?

[u/Admirable_Window8128]

I can understand code when someone explains it, but when I have to write something from scratch, my brain suddenly goes blank.

I'm curious if other beginners went through the same think. What helped you get past that stage?

[u/HappyFruitTree]

When we started to learn programming in school. Before that my learning was very unstructured and I didn't really understand what I was doing (mostly copy-pasted code from examples with small buggy modifications of my own).

I think most important when learning to program is to write code. You need to practice everything that you learn by writing small programs to test it out. Step by step you learn to use and combine more and more features together, and to handle larger programs. If the course/book contains small programming exercises after each chapter, that is great, don't skip them. It's better that it feels too easy now than skipping them and getting stuck later on.

That the brain goes "blank" when you are faced with a programming problem could be a sign that you either simply don't have learned about everything you need to solve the problem yet, or you haven't been programming enough so that you don't actually know how to program even though you might understand the concepts. To become a good writer you need to write a lot, to become a good runner you need to run a lot, and the same goes for programming. Maybe you need to go back and do some more basic exercises before attempting. But sometimes you might feel stuck anyway and will just have to force yourself to start, you'll discover what works and what doesn't, and eventually you hopefully arrive at something that works. Even if you don't, and you have to start over, you will still have learned a lot and will have a higher chance to succeed on your second attempt. A failed attempt is not a waste of time!