How not to lose interest in learning programming?

Question

Books

Hello! For a long time, I’ve been visiting Habr purely on autopilot, reading some articles that seem interesting, even if I don’t understand anything in them. And in general, the topic of IT technologies is interesting. I would like to learn something in this area.
The bottom line is that every time I start reading some book on programming or watching courses, I go through some part and then interest disappears. Not because they are somehow complicated and you have to break your head. I successfully complete the initial tasks, such as implement some kind of console program that takes words as input, sorts, swaps characters, and others like that, even if I have to spend a lot of time on the solution, I finish it to the end. And to continue learning further, the desire disappears. Probably from the fact that these "programs" do not cause delight in me. And so time after time.

Answer 1

Probably from the fact that these "programs" do not cause delight in me.

Probably because you want to write your Facebook on the first day, and make Doom on the second day, so all this FizzBuzz seems humiliating.
This is a common mistake and needs to be fixed.

Answer 2

"Probably from the fact that these "programs" do not cause delight in me."
Come up with your own that will cause delight and implement it, simultaneously mastering the technologies that will be used in it.

Answer 3

Wow! Yes, you just don’t need programming, it’s just not for you, since you are afraid of losing interest. When I studied programming, I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to implement and almost none of them were fully realized, but I tried to do it, I did it! Text editor, archiver, arcade game, bulk file renamer.
I broke games that were interesting to me (without art money, but digging and parsing the files and resources of the game)
You need to study what is interesting.
Why do you need programming, is it "like" cool? Or is there some purpose?

Answer 4

You are better off coding with a visual component.
Crafty.js
Unity
Write a simple arcade game and keep the fun going!

Answer 5

Because there is no specific task for an effective solution that you yourself will come up with, and after which you can see the result of the work done.
What you do according to the "textbook" is the basic knowledge that will be useful in the future, and for many this is the most correct and fastest way to programming.
There is a more complicated and long way, and most likely for 99% ineffective, it is not to start from knowledge to the task , but from the task to knowledge . But this is only if you have a lot of time.
And as Stepan saidWe need ideas and a great desire to implement them. Write another facebook / Doom / HL3, it will take you a lot of time, and the desire will disappear in a month, or even a week. But to write another runner game on Unity3d, it will take you several months, and the effect of what gradually turns out will be much greater.

Answer 6

Probably from the fact that these "programs" do not cause delight in me. And so time after time.

The further, the more interesting.
For example, I studied (and am currently studying) C#, and at some point I also got bored with the console, I looked at how to make window applications (in C#, this is WinForms), interest was restored, and I took a fresh look at all this and in tasks began to climb in my head, which for me with ̶l̶o̶zh̶n̶o̶v̶a̶t̶y, are impossible and I study and study everything.
PS If the console is boring, switch to windowed applications, if it doesn't work out, then sit on the console again.
PPS No need to throw everything half way, think about what will happen next, what topics are interesting there.
PPPS It is necessary to be able to work with the console, it will be useful to you. (but for a beginner, I agree, it gets boring quickly)
Try to take a break for a couple of days.

Answer 7

Either this is not for you, or you need to follow a completely different path of learning. Do not write small examples from books and articles, but do your own project, you will encounter a bunch of problems in the process, and you will already look for solutions to the Internet and books. See what interests you here. Usually programmers have a lot of ideas in their heads. If there are no ideas, then take a walk on freelance sites, read the tasks and choose one. It can be an interesting task, or an average, the most common one. Do it for yourself first, then, when everything works out, try for money for others. Another option after your project is to go get a job in the office, there will be a bunch of combat missions and a team.
However, I am of the opinion that in the absence of pleasure from the process, you should change the field of activity. Maybe, as an option, go to an adjacent area - management, testing, analytics, design, administration.

Answer 8

The bottom line is that every time I start reading some book on programming or watching courses, I go through some part and then interest disappears.

It is necessary to structure information about training for long periods of time. This is a very important component if you are going to do something seriously. Reading a book is not such a fast process. Writing a program is not only a long, but also a confusing process. And writing a few programs and reading a few books are all combined. You can't do without an organizer. Therefore, spend time organizing long processes. Learn what and how you will do it. What does "what" means is a tool, a program, or several programs, because different things are done by different programs. What does "how" mean is how you will use the funds, because they can also be used both effectively and inefficiently.
Your task: you wrote down information for a year, then there was a break, and after five years you discovered this data and you must understand everything and remember everything only from this information.
Here I have, for example, a book appears. I decided that I should read it and go through it all, because it will give me so-and-so. I'm willing to spend a year or two on it. I create for her her individual environment - like a project to study this book. Then I distribute in it where I will store the bookmarks of the passage of the book, notes by chapters, code examples from the book itself by chapters, training codes for experiments by chapters. It is important to back up this project so that one day you don’t lose information that has been accumulating for six months - you set up a backup, finding a place for it, making automatic backup scripts so that everything is quick (the scripts are ready from previous books). Here you get such a blank for studying the book. And after that you start, for example, transferring all the points to a separate file of passed points. I read the first paragraph of the first chapter - I saved important points on it in a separate file with an outline of the first chapter. You mark in the file of passed points that you have read the point. You write notes on this item in a separate file with notes for the first chapter. In general, the first chapter turns into such a folder with data only for her, the second chapter turns into a second folder with data only for her. You don't need to mix anything up. It is better to scatter as much as possible into individual folders and files, and then create a center header that combines it all together somewhere at the top. It's like an html file with links to chapters, where each link leads to an html file with links to paragraphs. You always need to know (see) what you have passed and what you have not passed, so that you can look at the past and say "having passed all this, from the new I learned this, this and this." If you need to re-read something, do not rush to it right away, write a note to yourself in a file with notes, just write to yourself for the future "re-read such and such a paragraph to learn more about that thing." When you write notes to yourself, do not leave moments where you need to remember or guess about the details, remember that when you read this, you will not be able to remember anything that seems obvious now, so write notes to yourself as you would write to a stranger . If you completed the task from the note, write down the date and "I completed the task." Everything, after that you can read the book as you like, all registration for its passage goes on and gives a complete picture.
With programs, everything is harder, since you need to write everything in more detail there and it can change a hundred times. This is not a simple science, you need to study a lot about versioning and bug tracking systems. Some time may pass and the old system may seem illiterate, it will be necessary to redo everything. Somewhere you worked on a waterfall, then it turned out that there is Scrum. Somewhere you worked directly, then it turned out that there are unit tests before the code. Then you start writing tests, and the whole program stops. And then the ideas that were there are no longer suitable, because you decided to redo everything, since for tests it would be better to write everything in a certain way. If you do not do this, then you need to continue writing the program illiterately and the result is quite unpleasant (the program goes to a dead end step by step and then it only remains to write it again, to at least continue to develop it). So the best advice here is always look at other projects, see how they are managed, even if it's difficult, learn this complex management. With all this knowledge, develop your own style of project management, because fashionable styles are also not a guarantee of efficiency, and bullshit can be fashionable and recognized with a smart look at conferences, but then everyone scrupulously still looks for something better (they cannot do it themselves nothing usually ;-) just talking to talk).
A lot of books have to be read very slowly and a lot of programs have to be written that are not the simplest. I hope you didn't want to keep all this in your head.

Answer 9

Not to lose interest - it's very simple, you need to take and earn money on it) the more money - the more interest, everything is simple)

Answer 10

form a conditioned reflex, reinforce it, for example, with sweets
programming is the ability to solve tasks, and not just a set of knowledge
in the process of learning, you need to write your own simple client-server application - chat, drawing, text editor, game
, etc.
someone else's code - without libraries, frameworks and ready-made databases,
you must be able to independently create-process-save the data you
need bicycle first -
to learn - you must do it yourself

Answer 11

Read the old book "Delphi 3 for Dummies" by Neil Rubenking, there are a lot of examples from different areas: text and image editors, databases, the Internet...

Answer 12

Constantly practice and develop. If you work, find time at home for programming, something new, something more difficult. Then the discovery of a new one will give you an impetus to the desire to develop and not get bored.

Answer 13

You can try something complex and mathematically beautiful - for example, dependent types.