Twitter Space: what difficulties did YOU face when you started coding?

Last week, I ask developers in a Twitter Space to tell us what difficulties they faced when they started coding. 9 developers answered. Here they are:

Ali Reza

It's been two years since I started coding. My first language was Python. I worked with Python for the first two weeks and it was easy the first and it was getting harder and harder day by day, so it was getting boring. The interesting part about Python for beginners is that when you print your name, you see it in the terminal. After two months I stopped Python and I stopped everything because I didn't know anything about HTML, CSS or Javascript. So Python was getting boring for me

The second part of my journey started when I started learning HTML, CSS and Javascript. HTML was interesting for me because you can make a website by coding! You see the result in a website! The difficult part of HTML was memorising the tags, the elements. I saw lots of developers using divs, and I was like "why are they using so many divs?" That was difficult for me, but then things got easier.

The CSS was really really hard for me. Like, how do you center a div? How do you create a responsive website? Or how do you change the style when you hover over something? I was really confused by this. Now I believe that if you practice and practice, it's getting easier and easier.

The last part is about Javascript. I saw developers using Javascript and I thought "why are they using Javascript?" When I finally came to the world of Javascript, I saw that you can do loads of things with it. So that was my story!

Sarfraz Mohsin

I have been in this space for four to five years but thing is, I still don't know anything. I am a graduate in Computer Applications so the mistake I did was learning a ton of topics but never really made projects. I just learned what was required to pass the exams. Never made any projects. I learned Python, I learned Java, the Javascript... I learned a language and then I stopped it. I lost a lot of time in that and I still regret for all of these things.

So please do make projects. This is what I did. I started learning HTML, CSS and Javascript again but this time I made a ton of projects. I'm learning doing open source in a good way. It's that simple.

Francesco Cuilla

I'm Francesco, I'm a developer advocate, I'm a Docker Captain and do stuff on the Internet, especially videos and I really really love this topic! I'd like to share something that I basically never really shared!

When I started coding for real (because I started coding when I was 15 to impress a girl, it didn't work). I started a Computer Science degree but I didn't like coding that much. I was more interested in the algorithms, maths and physics part. I was an unpopular and strange student because everyone was doing the coding exams and not the math exams, I was doing the opposite. I had a twisted mind.

At some point this changed. I decided to really step into coding. Even though I had a degree, I had to basically learn to code everything alone, everything by myself. How do you start if you want to learn coding? I started to watch tutorials, watch videos... I had a very theoretical approach because I wanted to understand things in detail, the theory etc. I didn't want to code for real. I felt overwhelmed because I wanted to learn everything. So my mind went "let's learn everything about code". After six months, I coded a lot, but the more I knew, the more I knew I know nothing. I felt stuck many times, and felt the disadvantages of learning in private, without a social media presence. It was very very hard. Now it's totally different.

The most diffult thing is the feeling of overwhelm, the tutorial hell and also the imposter syndrome.

Abhinav Pandey

I went to a similar phase. Basically trying to learn everything alone and facing everything alone. A special difficulty for me was when I started, I started working on a technology that wasn't very popular (Adobe Experience Manager). So if I Google something you wouldn't find anything on StackOverflow or any good documentation. So how do you manage such a situation? Now it's much better!

Sara Wallén

Don't know how interesting my story is. I've done little bits of coding on and off for years. Like, here's a script, there's a script and maybe we can chat to an Arduino through Bash,or maybe I can make this Excel spreadsheet more interesting with Macros or VBA... I actually learned how to use HTML through Word at the time. Despite having done lots of little bits of code here and there and bits of it in university and a little bit of web developer, I never felt like a programmer. I'm not entirely sure why that is. Maybe because I wasn't programming actual applications.

One of my biggest blockers was setting up all these environments. I found setting things up terrifying. Never quite work out how to make stuff work, what needed to be loaded, where are you supposed to write the code. This is what made HTML so lovely! You'd write the code and you'd open Internet Explorer and look! It's showing colours and stuff and you can manipulate and give you instant feedback!

Khalid Warsame

Not sure if this has been address but the biggest difficulty is actually not knowing what you don't know. Too many different topics, too many things to learn, tools like Git. As a mobile app developer, there were I didn't know until I was asked in an interview about it. I thought "yeah I might need to learn this and I have to go back to learn all over again and start interviewing again".

Waqar Ahmed

So my problem was I started working on a project before learning the basics of programming. Obviously I had several burnouts but I wanted to have an application. So I spent sometime struggling with programming and later on I started to learn the basics properly. I got a Java book and familiarised myself with object oriented programming and other basic stuff. That really helped me. This really helped my build applications. So yeah, I've made this mistake. Just getting started before learning the basics. Later on I did Code Wars which helped my improve my programming!

Filip Rakowski

I started coding very early. I was 13 and until I found my first job, it took me 5 years of freelancing. What surprised me the most when I joined a company was writing and reading code that others wrote. Even though I know the syntax and I know how to get things done, there's a huge difference in maintaining code written by others! The biggest difficulty I faced was not learning new things, but having the sense on how to write good code. There's not a single definition. What changed my career and basically helped me to be a great developer was finding people who I can always come to to ask for feedback, directions, talk about my code etc. When I was just contributing, I had code reviews etc. but the progress was very slow. Then I found a senior guy that actually took me under his wings. In a year I've done much bigger progress than I did in the last 5-6 years! I really recommend this!

Elucian Moise

I started programming in 1982. My first contact with Computer Science was when I was walking from school to home, I found a punch card on the street! I looked at the punch card and thought "at school they don't teach us anything about this!" I was very difficult to find out what is a punch card. I've seen a truck carrying a lot of punch cards and took some. Then I started studying that bunch of cards. I didn't understand how it's possible to do programming on these because wind is taking out several punch cards and it's screwing the program! That was my first idea of debugging in programming. You can mix up the order of bunch cards. I was disappointed. I was reading fantastic stories about computers that can play chess, that were big like a house! I thought "this isn't possible!". It was difficult for me because I didn't know how to make punch cards. The I found out that they were made with typewriting machines! Then I didn't know what a typewriting machine is so, I have a picture into a scientific paper about the QWERTY keyboard. I have started to learn how to type letters. I haven't found the Romanian letters and I said "Alright. Probably the computer is not programmable in Romanian, because these guys don't have all the letters!".

Then I found a book microcontrollers. I started learning Assembly and was amazed because there was no operation but addition. They were talking about some registry stuff. I finished the book and didn't understand how to do programming and thought "I must be an idiot". I didn't realise you needed a computer to do programming. So that was difficult for me. Then I bought a Lisp book, but again, I wasn't able to do programming in Lisp. I felt like a failure.

Then I disovered the PDP11. I saw the wheels spinning there with the band back and forward. I thought "this is new". But they were using punch cards? How the hell is this possible? New technologies! It was strange! They gave us a quiz on a monitor and I was getting dizzy: "This is awesome!". How is this possible? I was very frustrated.

Then they invented personal computers. The ones where you put an audio casette, and was very buggy.

Thank you for reading and I'll see you in the next one! 👋