I’ve been learning on and off about programming for 3 years now. Mostly front-end, html/css/js, for school projects. My degree isn’t in CS or IT, so projects that give the opportunity to code are scarce and often short. So I get that I may simply may not have enough hours in coding.
So I’m delighted to be taking CS50 as a Minor at the moment, this has given me the chance to sink a lot of hours in coding, and currently I am in week 5 Data Structures.
But every time I start on the problem sets, I feel overwhelmed and feel like I don’t understand anything. I have to Google/GPT the most basic of things. Even though I’ve been programming regularly the past 6 weeks, I don’t feel as if I have improved and I’m starting to doubt if this is a career for me.
In a year I would like to find a career in development. Have any of you felt this way? And what has helped you get rid of this imposter syndrome?
I to this day still have to Google tons of stuff, even very simple things; sometimes it’s just hard to remember that function’s name or whatever, it’s no big deal.
Programming didn’t click for me until I actually built something. Just a little command line game. Eventually after a certain point I realized: oh my god I can do anything! (with enough time)
You’ll get there, but try working on something bigger with zero stakes where you can feel out how code you write in one place ripples out to other places.