I found this exercise completely confounding. I looked at the solution and I still don’t completely understand it. First time that’s ever happened, but I fear that it’s not a good sign.
My question is: If I’m not getting right answers in Code Challenge exercises on my own at the ends of these modules, and I still need significant help to get the answer for many of them, is that bad at this point in the Python program?
I’m brand new to coding, and I really want to do this, but sometimes I worry that I’m never going to understand it completely and get comfortable with doing real problems. Perhaps I’m just not smart enough to learn this. I am really frustrated.
@mtf, any advice for a newbie who feels like maybe I should just quit?
Any craft we aspire to master is going to have hills to climb and curves to negotiate. In Europe it takes 14 years to become a Master Craftsman in many trades. The early years are frought with learning of elementary concerns and usually attendant with lots of labors and trivial responsibilities.
Programming is much the same. We want to make leaps and bounds and end up making baby steps that sometimes lead us further into the mire. Expect lots of failure and mistakes and confusion. It is something to relish in, and will pass so long as one never gives up.
Any time you find yourself facing a seemingly impassable gulf, screw up your courage and never accept that it is too great a challenge. Don’t give in to self-recrimination, and never belittle yourself. You don’t know what you possess, and might never know if you give up. Winners have the most failures behind them because they refuse to let defeat keep them from trying again. Just don’t quit.
Now, as for smarts, well… One would not be at this juncture without a modicum of smarts; you got this far. I’m convinced there is plenty evidence of smarts. If it was easy, and didn’t take a lot of smarts we’d be on Mars by now.
Think what we wouldn’t have done had we never tried.
Even the blind can overcome obstacles we many imagine. They don’t see them.
If you can’t find the answer, you if you aren’t understanding something, go back through the module, and redo exercises you didn’t understand. If you still don’t get it, try leaving the code for a while, then coming back to it. If you find an answer that you don’t understand, you can research what the different lines of code mean. All of this will help!
it does work, especially if the walk is a kilometer or two. You’d be amazed how much work our brain does for us when we give it the time and space. Walking is the right space for that.
I spent nearly an hour just to understand how this last challenge’s solution works. I am almost 40 years old, and sometimes I want to cry because of your tasks. I know that I am too stupid to be a programer and I am too old to become smart, but I just have no another chance to be able to pay my bills, so I will be a programer anyway. Just want all of you to be prepared to face my dumb code in the future. Know that: I did my best! (sorry for my bad english too)
