How and when to learn programming for a student?

Question

IT education

At the moment I am studying in the 10th grade of a private school, and it was in it that from the 7th grade I began to be interested in programming. At first, everything was simple, the general theory of programming, as a practice, olympiad tasks, there was a computer science teacher who was useful at first, but then my knowledge required more, and I studied by myself from articles and videos. Everything was fine until the moment when I went beyond the topics of variables, cycles, etc., where OOP began. And I learned it over time, but even then I realized that the same C ++ and Python that I studied can be put into practice only with a huge knowledge of libraries and algorithms. And to be honest, their use was meager for me, because you also need to know other disciplines, from languages ​​to databases. And then you can say "freaked out", because. no longer knew what to study, and in what order. On the one hand, there is a base, but on the other hand, it is not enough for small projects, except for calculators and the like. Because of this, by the way, I started jumping around languages, the last of which is Dart and Flutter, but I was bent with it. the laptop does not pull the same Android studio
This is all background, but the main question is, am I in a hurry? In terms of general knowledge, I have already overtaken many senior classes (our seniors are 12th grades) who took the direction of computer science, and university students, except of course some mathematical geniuses who click Olympiads. Is it normal in the study of programming, when you hit a wall, but you don’t see a way out, and is there a solution to this, or is it necessary to wait for a university?

Answer 1

Then learn by doing. Take the project you want to make, like a game. Start with something simple, the same classic Arkanoid or Tetris. Immediately there will be a lot of questions: how is it? How about here? How about here then? And through the solution of these problems you will raise your skill. Games like this don't need any complex libraries (the only library needed is the one that allows you to draw lines, squares and circles on the screen). And the potential for development is for at least six months. Adding levels, modes, bonuses, leaderboards, etc. Then, for example, studying a more serious graphics library (the same OpenGL) using the example of this game: pseudo-3D, texturing, lighting, etc.
Of course, instead of the game, you can take any other project that interests you. At least a program for calculating the rating of chess players based on the results of the tournament (this is a different topic, you will have to study other things here) and improve this topic until you feel that there is something else that can be done, but you don’t know how. This understanding of "how exactly" is called the improvement of skills.

Answer 2

The trouble is that you learn from articles and videos, because of which you only get the illusion of competence and cannot do anything more complicated than calculators. Experience shows that a couple of textbooks are enough to make at least a crooked, but quite real pet project.
PS Mathematics and Olympiad tasks have nothing to do with the ability to program real things.

Answer 3

Completely agree with the answer above. You should start studying from books
. But I also want to recommend Timofey Khiryanov 's Channel . Although the lectures there last for hours, the amount of information received will replace dozens of 10-minute videos.
Personally, after I learned the Python base, variables, loops, etc. I switched to telegpam-bot, at first I copied other people's projects and edited them for myself. Then I began to go deeper, going to libraries and also had to study the API, which will also improve your "skill" in programming

Answer 4

In this case, it may be useful for educational purposes to actually make some kind of small project (instead of solving problems from the olympiads - this can already be taught to the bot ).
The development of your own project will just bring specifics to the choice of working tools and indicate gaps in knowledge.