Lack of motivation to continue.

Hey Lainons. Though I've been into tech since ~6, I've noticed that programming specifically seems to evade me at every turn. Learning Bash and Linux was easy, but every time I try to learn programming (C, Rust, anything really) I gradually stop caring, and when I eventually come back to it I always have to start from scratch due to having forgotten everything. How do y'all motivate yourselves to do this? It's not as if I'm not interested, I am, but given the scale of most programming languages, it seems like a puzzle I just can't figure out.

You don't have to be interested in programming. That's OK.

>>39465 Just do what interests you with the knowledge you have. You really don’t need to know that much to accomplish things. Sometimes I look back at some of the early stuff I did and I’m shocked at how horrible the code quality is, but also how I could do so much while not knowing anything. Bash is plenty capable on its own, and if you don’t know how to do something you can learn it in bits and pieces. You’ll be much more motivated if you have a specific reason to know something: “I’m trying to do this but I don’t know how, let me look it up”. Maybe stick with languages where it’s easy to make something fast, but not necessarily robust (bash python javascript). I would never learn rust as a first language.

Most adults are incapable of learning something inherently dry with no actual goal in mind.

Why would you think you can learn something with no reason for doing so? Youd have to have a specific idea of what you want to make and it be something you actually are passionate about otherwise you wont learn soykaf. I used to do programming years ago and cant remember soykaf because I didnt keep it up and it's basically just looking up and copy and pasting code when I did do it.

Start smaller with something like game maker which is a streamlined simplified programming environment. Most programmers start with something simpler, people used to learn BASIC before they moved onto C and assembly.

>>39465 It sounds like you're into "systems" stuff but maybe not into programming/compsci for its own enjoyment? Have you tried getting into more specific stuff than just programming, like maybe OSs or Sysadmin stuff? Try reading OSTEP, for example. Forget about programming languages, they're a waste of time anyways.

>>39465 Everyone above this post is giving basically the same answer, coming from different angles and phrased in differently. I'll try to boil it down from what I've seen. If you had to eat a slice of pizza for the rest of your life as your only meal, you'd come to hate it eventually, even if just for missing stake, or something. However fun programming and tech is to you, if there isn't a higher order reason motivating you, it's almost impossible to put in the effort; a part of knows it's useless anyways. Literally everyone has already suggested getting some project-based goal in mind to motivate you, but I'd go one step further: what is it you *enjoy* about programming, and how can you make that enjoyment go *bonkers* from excitement? Let your vision of fun guide what you wanna do, not the actual usage of the tools inform what you do with them. I say this as a guy who gobbled down a 700-page college textbook on C because I needed to. It seemed like the most favorable entryway into programming, and if I didn't succeed in programming I was ultra-fuarrrked, boned and baked. Overarching reason: survival, deadly necessity. In your case, it's a little harder, because when it comes to overarching reasons, negative motivation reasons are more common than positive ones. Prior to some two months ago, all my higher order reasons have been negative for the past five years straight.

>>39481 What was your motivation for getting into c specifically? I assume you went through king's book, did it really take you 2 months?

I think programming is almost always a useless activity as most things you'd want have already been done in several implementations years ago. I've been in a similar loop, and have since concluded that most digital technology is like kicking dead whales down the beach and shouldn't exist, so why bother trying to one up others in tech skills? There are better things to life that actually are real, unlike flipping millions of microscopic switches made with the blood of millions, that you'll never be able to make or fully comprehend.

>>39483 not with that attitude, most joy of programming is actually in mathematics which you use to represent your reality.

>>39484 Oh, so like an art form? I see the fun in that then. But as stallman says: >If they [programming textbooks] make natural intuitive sense to you, that indicates your mind is well-adapted towards programming. >If they don't make intuitive sense to you, I suggest you do something other than programming. You might be able to do programming to some degree with a struggle, but if you find it a struggle you won't be very good at it and you won't enjoy it. What's the point of programming if it is a struggle instead of a fascination? It's your choice -- if your brain is better suited to some other activity, you could choose that instead. I don't fully agree but it's a good point

>Learning Bash and Linux was easy I imagine you learned both Bash and Linux for functional purposes, right? Bash to automate stuff and Linux because you'd rather use Linux over Windows. So, you'd need a reason similar to learn programming. Maybe you need a program you just, for the live of you, can't find online. So you resort to making it yourself. If you really want to learn to program, Do not focus on learning a specific language. The basics of programming are applicable to pretty much ALL languages. Really the only thing that changes between em are features and syntax. Once you learn C, you pretty much learned all the C like procedural languages. C++ ? All OOP languages, you heathen. Haskell? MAYBE all functional languages. I'm simplifying ofc but it is generally true in my experience.

>>39486 Or learn everything from scratch by making your own language

>>39482 Other than soul crushing pressure to find a job, I chose C as a first language because by all accounts it's really elementary and teaches you fundamentals like no other. Since i had to get a job, and this was pretty much the best entryway to programming, it was go time. >>39486 said it best: >If you really want to learn to program, Do not focus on learning a specific language. The basics of programming are applicable to pretty much ALL languages. Really the only thing that changes between em are features and syntax. Once you learn C, you pretty much learned all the C like procedural languages. C++ ? All OOP languages, you heathen. Haskell? MAYBE all functional languages. I'm simplifying ofc but it is generally true in my experience. Why two months for the book, though? Is there a 700 page book by this King guy, where the estimate is you'll get through it in two months? Mine took three, bro. And that's without going deep into c data structures, since i already had the fundamentals down and they got quite easy. I went with problem solving and program design in C. Great textbook.

>>39489 I said two months referring to this >Prior to some two months ago, all my higher order reasons have been negative for the past five years straight I thought that meant you started to study at that point. Never heard of the book you used but it seems ok and if it worked for you that's all that matters. I personally struggled to get into c past the very basics due to not having clearly defined goals that justified the effort, I'm now using python as it is way easier to just get stuff done while studying math and implementing what I learn as I go. I plan to revisit c when I can come up with some motivation to do so that'll keep me hooked, I just know it wouldn't work right now.

>>39490 What type of maths are you into ?

>>39491 I wasted most of my life doing absolutely nothing so the result is me having to go through precalculus again now so that I can go to university. As a nothing-knower, I find most of what I come across while reading discussions/various wikipedia pages interesting, there's just too much of a knowledge gap to really understand any of it. To answer your question, I don't really know, from an outsider looking in perspective, abstract algebra and number theory seem like the most interesting to get in, but I'm not sure that means anything. I'm mostly in it for the model of thinking, struggling with problems until everything is understood, with or without a real world application for things. Sorry for the aimless response, tldr: I don't know.

>>39492 I am more into logic and mathematical philosophy. PS: I recommend the Dover book of elementary calculus and the book of ordinary differential equations ,both have a equilibrium of rigor and accessibility.

>>39493 I'll take a look at those books, thanks lainon.

>>39485 I agree with stallman here but the problem is being a mediocre programmer pays more than being above average in many other fields. Just how capitalism works.

As most of lainons already said here: you don't learn a new skill just because. What do you want to achieve learning programming? You want to be a professional programmer? You want to do some personal projects? Want to build a game? You need to have something in mind so you can sail your ship in that direction. If you want to learn programming just for the sake of it, you need to actually like to do programming. If you don't find programming really interesting, you will abandon the ship soon or later. In my case, I started learning programming because I was bored with the Law School (yeah, I'm a fuarrrking lawyer who programs lol). Most of my friends were in the Electronics course, so most of my time I was seeing programming, robotics and electronics, not law. And that was when I thought: wait a second, why not just learn programming if that's what I really like? Initially I was planning to do some robotics, but then I discovered that programming was what I enjoyed doing the most. That was in 2010 ish. In 2012 I started working as a web programmer, made some "easy money" doing wordpress, PHP etc. It was enough for me, I had plenty of time to work on the projects I really liked to do: games. Gotta admit, I still like to code, I can't see myself doing anything else. All that story is just to illustrate to you that I was capable of going further because I enjoyed what I was doing, I had a goal in mind, I wanted to build robots, then after that I wanted to build games and I still want to this day. When you have a goal in mind you can set checkpoints, you can measure your growth, knowledge, experience etc. Find something you really like to do. And by the way, you don't NEED to learn programming if you don't really like it. That's okay, not everyone was born to be a programmer. The same way, not everyone was born to be a lawyer, an engineer, a chef, a plumber etc. You need to discover what you want to do first, and if it's not programming that's also okay. Just do what you like and be the best on what you do.

anyone here grinding artificial intelligence and if so, at what level are you grinding ?

>>40089 My problem with trying to learn this way, is actually finding the information and resources to build x. I know there are loads of programming books that teach you how to build nothing with basics from A to Z, but that isn't a way to find anything. At least in my case. I was thinking of getting a tutor to show me a specific path to start with, but the price isn't feasible

I'm having a similar problem with motivation. I don't have any kind of ideas for personal programming projects. I guess I will start solving programming puzzles at sites like Project Euler, Advent Of Code, Leetcode, Exercism, HackerRank, CodeWars, etc.

OP, proggers are tops glammed up... I hope u didn't pick up too many mind viruses about it. Doing anything worthwhile is very difficult. Alone its about a lifestyle work... u can do a bit more if your circumstances are lucky. But most valuable stuff is done by teams. If u compare yourself to that u will be sad. If u just want job, do networking and school. Learning comes second. Uhhh.... prey for a better world with me plz. >>40101 I'm hard up on the mechanistic interpretability rn. I hope we can figure out AI alignment b4 the robits boot us out of the control room

>>40119 I have a million ideas. Do you want to join forces and explore how to build x or y? Security? Backend with php?

>>40126 ai will play a control factor on future. i am grinding hard but it is a massive rabbit hole.Especially if you want to start from the very beginning till the state of art.

>>40133 > if you want to start from the very beginning till the state of art This is your problem. There is NO REASON to do things the way they did in the 70s. >>40101 MIT OCW has a good machine learning lecture series that I wish everyone would follow along (exercises too) before opining on "AI".

>>40148 ofc there is, i want to understand the whole process and how it evolved

>>39465 Maybe your interest is driven by not only desire but also necessity. Think of why you would require something more than bash: higher performance, more power and freedom, much more functionality, not relying on external commands for most crucial things, etc etc etc. Imagine yourself writing a CLI in Bash vs. a programming language. Writing the functionality, CLI parser, dotfile parser (if any), etc will be much better on a programming language that was meant for this. Now imagine the software projects you feel at least some need to make, maybe to solve some problem or to automate things. This might give you the motivation to learn something more than Bash. On the other hand it might just be that you are not into C and Rust. Or you might just be reading the entire guides and documentation, looking up features and functionality that you have no use for, and maybe that's why you have no interest. Truth is, as long as you have the DIY mentality, you require very few features from a programming language.

you're clearly not interested in programming. just find something you're actually interested in.

>>39465 >How do y'all motivate yourselves to do this? Honestly the first time I started up python and I could interact with my computer in a repl, I thought it was really cool, and I kept playing around with it until I had something I really wanted to build, and I just kept going and struggling because I had the thing I wanted to build in my head (at the time it was a cgi script for a web page or something) and the reward was enough to keep me motivated. Now it's the same, I have something I want to build. Even if I have to take lots of breaks and get distracted, the journey is rewarding because getting a piece of the puzzle working feels good. My current project is for myself, so I am also using the languages and tools that I want to know more about, so solving problems (even ones I have already solved before) can be a new experience. For you, programming maybe was ruined by bad teachers. Kind of how literature is. But if you've never enjoyed like actually having a problem and doing the loop of writing, running, debugging and back to writing/changing code, then I don't see why you should stick with it. At best you will be that coworker that hates their job. And I'm not saying this to make programming some elite club. I'm genuinely happy you've at least tried it, and ruled it out. There are so many things I'm soykafty at that you're probably so much better than I am at. I am just saying that it will be painful to dedicate your time to something you don't enjoy doing, and programming is one of those things you have to spend really a lot of time on. tl;dr I like it, if you don't maybe it's not for you