Useful tips for beginning programmers with procrastination and anxiety issues?

Useful tips for beginning programmers with procrastination and anxiety issues?
Looking for some help with this. Any links, advice, etc... - would be widely appreciated. And I am aware of stickies threads and etc... I simply am looking for some more personal-oriented conversation.


Thanks,
- ATLAS

 

There's Codecademy. That's what I use to mess around with code. It also teaches you code too. [member=5482]duck[/member], could you post that Lua PDF?

 

www.codecademy.com
JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, HTML, CSS, Python, and Ruby.

www.lua.org
Lua sorts of things.

 

Always start small.
If you start small, you'll have no fear or hesitation of starting and working on a project.

I've always wanted to make big projects, but due to the amount of effort and difficulty I perceive in these projects, I give up in fear that it may lead to all-nighters and frustration.

So again, start small.
In fact, sometimes when I make what would've been a small project, it becomes big.
Humorous or non-humorous, you'll eventually find one project you just want to keep adding stuff to, and that'll be more programming practice for you.

 

Nah. Learn what's necessary and start big, it'll give you a far better basis to kick off from, and it'll let you jump onto other projects easily.

 

I sorta disagree with starting big.
There's no wrong answers here, so, to ATLAS: you should probably try big or small and see which one you're comfortable with. Starting big isn't too much of a bad idea unless you are an absolute beginner.
Everybody has different preferences and some can handle big stuff easily, while some can't.

This is why I disagree with starting big:

Doing a big project while you're learning basic stuff will not only slow you down on learning how to program better, but it will also create much frustration because you will make several errors inevitably.

Small projects help you practice different bits and pieces of the programming language you are learning.
Not only that, but you may take interest in one project you had and maybe expand on it. That's when a big project might come up when you're learning.

Now, after you learn what you need... that's when you go big.
You have the knowledge and skills needed to tackle big stuff then.

What I say is from my experience though.
People have taken their own paths and have different views on how to get on your feet.
I wouldn't ever say anybody here is wrong, or any advice will always work or be right.

 

I think your best bet would be as the others said: Start small, and work yourself up from there.

Use Code Academy like Owl suggested, it'll get you started off pretty well. I know I'm going to start using it.

 

Start small, I'd say. Learn what you need and start small. If you start big, you might get bored.

 

I don't understand why people say, "Start big. Create the biggest thing out there!"

I don't see, how someone either learning/finished learning, will pull off something 'big'.

Just dunno.

Don't start big, instead make small things. Sometimes, I like to test myself at a random time, and write a random code, and see if I make any mistakes.

 

If you start big it's often beneficial, at least that's what I have found. If I'm learning a new language that's web-based I always make this project first; image sharing. It's what I'm using when I share this image for example



Find a project you'd like to try and move your way towards that slowly, learning everything you can in the meantime. Don't stick to that project if it ends up being boring, take chances. Take risks.

 

Am I the only one who's thinking "what the fuck does anxiety have anything to do with coding?"

I'm with the latter. Don't start big. I did that, and it fucking sucked, because I couldn't even code a fizz buzz interpreter for java.
Learn the basics, know what you're doing, and then fuck around with CW.

 

I sometimes get anxiety when I code too. It's just a matter of the project, time constraints, expectations, etc. (needing to make a deadline with a short amount of time and a lot of work ahead is usually a big reason).

 

Read up on Garry's Mod wiki, download other code and mess around with that and see what happens. lol

 

Tomo's doing just fine coding, so bad example.

 

I have anxiety and depression issues as well, but I still code pretty good I guess.

 

Depression and anxiety are two different things. Not entirely, but they're different, regardless. Depression wouldn't really fit into coding, or even wanting to code, for that matter. Coding isn't something you have to do for a living, or at least I'm assuming it isn't, you do it in your own time.

I'm just talking a bunch of shit.

 

Procastination has always been my ruin. I lost over 300EUR of commissions just due to that, more than commissions have actually earned me.

I still haven't figured out how to work even when I feel a lot like "doing it later", but I know that having faith in the project helps a lot. If I have that, I often decide to work instead of having fun doing something else. Programming is still fun for me, the difference being that you have to use your brain a lot, while you almost have to use none of it to wreck some shit on Insurgency.

An effective (but sometimes bad) way to help getting rid of procastination issues, is to think about everything good that will come if you finish your project as soon as possible. The reason it can be bad at times, is that if you finish the project and all your expectations you kept reinforcing with this method are not met, it's going to be some serious shit to deal with.