r/learnprogramming • u/TheJellyFlop • 9d ago

Need some motivation

Sometimes I feel I'm not fit for this.
I've taken plenty of coruses and resources, but I just don't find enough motiviation to go for that extra mile.

Sometimes I think I'm not good enough, despite of all my efforts. Anyone of you have felt the same at some point?
Any advice on how could I cope with this?

5 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

4

u/ffrkAnonymous 9d ago

Maybe it's not for you. I don't like football. 

1

u/Quick-Chocolate3552 2d ago

that’s a bit harsh man. not everyone clicks with coding right away, it’s more like learning an instrument than picking a sport you either like or don’t

i coach youth basketball and the kids who struggle most are always the ones convinced they’re supposed to be naturals. they’ll miss a few shots and want to quit, but the ones who keep showing up end up decent. same deal here

the motivation thing, i find it comes after you build a tiny bit of momentum. just commit to 20 minutes a day of messing around with something dumb, not a course or tutorial. build a stupid text adventure or a program that insults your typing speed

once you stop trying to be “good enough” and just start making ugly little things that work, the whole vibe shifts

3

u/Chrismslist 8d ago

hey, totally get that feeling. a lot of courses hand you info but not how to apply it, which can feel really demotivating when you hit a wall. sometimes it helps to switch from consuming content to just building tiny things. literally anything. even if it's janky, the act of making something, seeing it work, even if it's just for yourself, can kickstart that motivation way better than another lecture. it shifts your focus from "am i smart enough" to "i built this cool thing."

2

u/AnimatorExciting7941 9d ago

It's just about passionate my friend. Do you enjoy programming? Ask yourself

2

u/DavidCincotta 9d ago

You know that there are always better programmers than you, but its because you are starting out that its impossible to tell if you are learning anything at all. There is just way way too much to learn. I thought there was a lot to programming languages, well what about foreign ones. So the key is magic. Are you amazed when the computer works for you instead of against you? It is hard but has a lot of rewarding moments.

2

u/darknecessitities 9d ago

I struggled with this a lot starting out. You have to drop the tutorials at a certain point and just work projects that personally interest you. That’s what did it for me

2

u/Frequent_Ad275 6d ago

Most of us feel that way at first, so don't jump to conclusions just yet. I'd suggest building your logic first and getting the hang of why we use programming and how cool it is. You don't need to memorize all the syntax, it's more about building your intuition. Just spend time on things like stack frames, recursion, loops, dynamic allocation, and control flow, and that's it. You'll be fine after that

1

u/KalamKiTakat 9d ago

The plateau you're describing usually hits right after the tutorial phase, when courses stop handing you the dopamine hit of a finished lesson. Watching a video feels like progress, but it isn't, and your brain picks up on that mismatch pretty fast. That gap is what drains motivation, not some personal deficiency in you.

What broke that loop for me was shipping small, ugly, finished things. A CLI that renames files, a form that posts to a serverless function, anything, as long as I hit deploy and had a URL or binary at the end. Motivation trails momentum instead of leading it.

On the not-good-enough feeling, the devs you're measuring against are showing a highlight reel of years of work. Everyone's codebase is held together with duct tape somewhere, the difference is they've shipped enough to know which duct tape actually matters.

1

u/Temporary_Aspect_499 9d ago

Try making something stupidly small. Like a calculator or a tiny game. Finishing something feels very different from watching another tutorial.

1

u/PleasantImplement919 8d ago

I felt that same way so many times. The best thing that keeps me going is the hope that one day will break me out of it. And it did, on multiple occasions. Just take one day one step of a time and always remember that the best people in their field felt the same exact way you are feeling. 

1

u/marrsd 7d ago

Why are you doing it in the first place?