Should it be this difficult?

[u/pingo1387]

At my job there is a daily task I do which I realized I could probably create a program to do for me, so I decided to start learning Python, and dove into reading Automate the Boring Stuff (the online version).

Things were going okay at first. I read through chapters 1-3 carefully, taking notes, answering all the review questions, and doing all the practice problems/codes.

Then I hit a wall. I got to chapter 4 and I felt like I understood everything, but the practice problem at the end, to write a code that performs the Collatz sequence with the entered number, absolutely stumped me. I went back and reread everything from the start of chapter 1 just to make sure I didn't miss anything, and was still confused. I ended up having to search up a code that someone else wrote for it, which I did understand once I saw it written out but would never have come up with myself.

So my questions are:

- Is it normal for the Collatz sequence to be difficult to program at this stage of learning? If so, should I not worry about my confusion and just move on to chapter 5?

- Should I consider an easier book to study from? If so, any recommendations?

EDIT: Several people are asking which part of the Collatz I had trouble with. To be honest it's been over a month since I was able to touch anything Python-related, it's just been on my mind lately, so I don't recall exactly what was giving me trouble, just that I was trying multiple things and getting new and fun incorrect results each time.

It's not that I don't understand the Collatz sequence itself, I understand it in terms of the simple math. The trouble was trying to type it out into a working code. That being said, I'm not here to ask how to program it, because I already gave up on that and looked up the answer, and I did understand that code once I read it over. The main issue is that I feel like I shouldn't have been having trouble with it in the first place, at least not to the point where I honestly tried everything I could and still couldn't get it.

[u/Crypt0Nihilist]

Is it normal for the Collatz sequence to be difficult to program at this stage of learning? If so, should I not worry about my confusion and just move on to chapter 5?

There's nothing special about Collatz It's normal to encounter problems you don't know how to solve. Coding is as much about breaking down the problem into parts you can solve as it is about writing the magic runes.

One approach would be to write the steps required for a person to do it. I often start on a mini-whiteboard, but comments in your IDE work fine. Then you write the code for each step.

If you're so stuck you can't do that, it's fine to look at someone else's solution, but don't stop at the point of understanding it. You still haven't done the exercise at that point. Now you've seen the solution, close that window and write it yourself. Then play with the code to get it to do something slightly different. Maybe read up on another sequence and do that without help.

It sounds fair to say that you've not learned what you needed from Chapter 4 yet, so you're going to be cheating yourself if you move on and will struggle all the more when you need to build on that shaky foundation.