QA Friday 2016-Apr-08

Can I learn programming if I’m stupid? I thought this was a really powerful question that I found online. Maybe because I’m able to relate to it so much. I share with you a couple personal stories in this episode from a time when I was firmly in the “stupid” category myself. In many ways, I’m still there. We all are. If there’s one thing you need to understand, it’s that there’ll always be somebody smarter or better than us. If you’re the type of person who takes everything to its logical final result, then you might ask, “Okay, but what about the last person who’s better than everybody else? Surely at least somebody is better, right?” My answer is first to consider best at what? We’re all good at some things and not so good at others. And this changes over time. It’s very likely that one person might be better than you at one thing while you’re better than that person at something else. I’ve mentioned before about how engineering is about tradeoffs. Well, it applies here too. Another thing to consider is history. Maybe you are the best in the world at some task. But that title is only good right now. Maybe there used to be somebody who already died that was better. And there will definitely be somebody yet to be born who will be better than you in the future. Don’t worry about it. The only reliable measure you can use to determine how good you are is if you’re better today than you were yesterday. It’s all about making steady and consistent progress. If you enjoy programming and you’re getting better, then yes, you can learn programming. Listen to the full episode or you can also read the full transcript below. Transcript Okay on to the question this week. I’ve been answering questions online recently and came across this question. I’m not trying to be mean to ask the question like this. This is how it was asked and I thought it was a very powerful question. First let me say that there will always be somebody smarter or better than you or me. So don’t get trapped in a thought process that’s getting you down. The only thing we should compare ourselves with is how much we’ve grown since the day before. Learning programming is fun for a lot of reasons and for a lot of people. It takes a lot of time too. So if you’re not having fun with it, then the first thing to consider is if you’re approaching the task in the right way. If you’ve tried everything and never want to look at another line of code again, that’s okay. Go do something that you do enjoy. Whatever you really enjoy, is what you’re going to want to spend time doing. And that’s what you’ll eventually get good at. Before we get too far, let me ask you a question. What makes you think that you’re stupid? For many of us, this can come about through constant negative feedback when we were little. Comments like, “That’s dumb,” “What are you stupid, or something,” can really sting and scar any of us for a long time. You know what, I’ve done some really stupid things in my life too. Things that even a 2 year old probably would’ve done better. I don’t dwell on them though. Let me share a couple with you. I remember 5th grade and our multiplication tests. We had, I don’t know, maybe a minute to answer a page full of simple multiplication facts. At the end of one test, my teacher asked me why I had skipped every single multiplication involving zero. I was embarrassed and told her it was because I was saving them for the end. When really, I had no idea what it meant to multiply by zero. It was like my mind refused to acknowledge those operations. And the really bizarre thing about all this was that I had just been moved into the gifted class. And do you know why I was moved to this new class and even this new school? Yes, they sent m