Did Any Of You Guys Felt Like Noobs When You Started?

The Partridge Family were neither partridges nor a family. Discuss.
Ziltwix
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Joined: January 3rd, 2017, 5:12 pm

Did Any Of You Guys Felt Like Noobs When You Started?

Post by Ziltwix » February 16th, 2017, 8:15 pm

Hello everyone! I have been fairly new to this forum (About 1 or 2 months) and I see a lot of people who have been on this forum for quite some time.

My actual name is Lonnie and I have always wanted to program. I never really stayed quite committed until a few months ago and it is inspiring to see a lot of people share their ideas and thoughts around.

I found Chili's channel back in 2013 when I was a freshman in college and because of certain events I had to stop. I started to code when I was 17 in high school but because of my inexperience and lack of communication skills, I did not excel at the discipline. In July of 2016 I tried C# but because of life events, I fell off the wagon.

It wasn't until I saw Chili post a video, I decided, "Screw it....he's in my subscriptions so....YOLO!" I forgot how engaged I became with the videos and his sense of humor that I began to find myself attempting C++ again.

I'm a fairly slow learner when it comes to the logic of code, however, there is something so beautiful and painfully challenging that I had to learn more.

Now to the real questions. Did ANY of you guys had any difficulty of problems as you were on the path to becoming a programmer or learning a specific language? I feel stuck sometimes on some videos as I want to try my very best to learn the concepts as thoroughly as I can.

It does not discourage me that my learning process is slow, but I am unbelievably thankful for this community and the wonderful people who keep me motivated. The determination from everyone here makes me want to get better so that when I reach an adequate level, I can hopefully help that person just as much as many of you all have done.

I am curious because everyone on here is knowledgeable in some form or another about C++ or coding, shiiiiet.....even life in general.

Thank you all for reading my disgusting long and drawn out story and questions!

:D

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Yumtard
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Re: Did Any Of You Guys Felt Like Noobs When You Started?

Post by Yumtard » February 16th, 2017, 8:24 pm

I def feel like a noob.
And I feel more and more like a noob every day :D.
I saw albinopapa mentioning in another thread that it took him 6 months to become decent

Ziltwix
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Joined: January 3rd, 2017, 5:12 pm

Re: Did Any Of You Guys Felt Like Noobs When You Started?

Post by Ziltwix » February 16th, 2017, 8:29 pm

It's crazy right?!
albinopapa was assisting me with understanding how the reticle would collide with a rectangle. I had to Google what he said at least 3 times to understand what he was going on about XD

MrGodin
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Re: Did Any Of You Guys Felt Like Noobs When You Started?

Post by MrGodin » February 16th, 2017, 8:38 pm

Well, i struggle all the time with concepts but my drive to learn and challenge myself keeps me going. I still have lots of problems with architecture of a program which frustrates me to no end. My issue is having a grand idea of creating something and get completely lost right smack in the middle of it and often times I will scrap the whole project. This is not necessarily a bad thing for me because along the way i learn what may or may not work, it's always a learning curve. I have no prior schooling, hell i never even graduated high school :P, but my need to create things is a strong passion. I wrote my first line of code at the age of 16 and throughout the years played with it on and off.
So don't feel bad if you have struggles with concepts and logic, I'm sure most of us do. I don't consider myself all that knowledgeable with coding, especially the math., but it doesn't stop me from trying.
If you have the passion and desire to learn, then you will :). Don't get to discouraged and I've found that if i get too frustrated then i just take a break for a while, sometimes months, and start over, refreshed and motivated.
Peace
Curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought him back

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YoMomIsANiceLady
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Re: Did Any Of You Guys Felt Like Noobs When You Started?

Post by YoMomIsANiceLady » February 16th, 2017, 8:38 pm

Nah, I was born in C++ land. C++ is my native language. You filthy casuals know nothing. I wrote my first game when I was 2 years old. 30'000 lines of code. Baguette on my level!

...on a more serious note. Yes it's difficult. I've been properly learning how to program for almost 4 years now, not to mention the good old pawn language for making gamemodes in gta:sa-mp when I was 12 and I still find it very confusing at times.
"Life is like death, but completely different"
- Ivan Gašparovič

Ziltwix
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Joined: January 3rd, 2017, 5:12 pm

Re: Did Any Of You Guys Felt Like Noobs When You Started?

Post by Ziltwix » February 16th, 2017, 8:53 pm

It's very inspiring to see people continue and learn from this discipline.

YoMomIsANiceLady, you must show to the messiah we call C++!

albinopapa
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Re: Did Any Of You Guys Felt Like Noobs When You Started?

Post by albinopapa » February 17th, 2017, 12:11 am

Yeah, noob status isn't always fun. Debugging things when you don't even know what the result is suppose to be or what the code is suppose to do, drawing a blank when staring at an empty project thinking "Ok, I've got this" just five minutes earlier.

Chili mentions this in his episode 20 series, but I've been doing it since the beginning. I first watch, then follow along then try on my own going back to the video when I need to check on syntax. As Yumtard pointed out, it took me about 6 months to understand C++ well enough to start coding things. It took me another year and a half to understand how to use the DirectX and Win32 APIs and I still get lost using the MSDN website quite often. If it wasn't for resources on the internet of examples on how to use some this stuff I would have given up long ago.

So for advice, if you ever get stuck, look for examples on how to use something, cplusplus.com is my favorite place because almost everything in C++ has an example there. I especially use it to figure out which headers I need to include.
If you think paging some data from disk into RAM is slow, try paging it into a simian cerebrum over a pair of optical nerves. - gameprogrammingpatterns.com

Ziltwix
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Joined: January 3rd, 2017, 5:12 pm

Re: Did Any Of You Guys Felt Like Noobs When You Started?

Post by Ziltwix » February 17th, 2017, 2:30 am

Thank you, albinopapa! They gives me more motivation and strength to keep doing this!

Ziltwix
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Joined: January 3rd, 2017, 5:12 pm

Re: Did Any Of You Guys Felt Like Noobs When You Started?

Post by Ziltwix » February 17th, 2017, 2:38 am

I can't imagine what progress will feel like a year from now.

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BurakCanik
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Re: Did Any Of You Guys Felt Like Noobs When You Started?

Post by BurakCanik » February 19th, 2017, 3:01 pm

Actually, As Yumtard said, you feel more and more like a noob each day :D
In this field, you never stop learning, there's always new tech coming along (both hardware and software), languages evolve, paradigms change etc. One day you are using new and delete next day you are using smart pointers and tomorrow god knows what. This is not a rant, it's just my observations. And thank god for smart pointers :D

Also generally, you take a "black box" approach when learning something. You assume something works the way it works and do not concern yourself with "how" or "why" it works that way. You start using it without knowing its internal structure. Later on, you discover "how" it works, pieces start to connect. For example in Chili's videos you start by assuming that there is this PutPixel() function that is well... putting a pixel on the screen. You don't know how it works but you don't give a sh*t. You use it to draw poo (maybe you do give a sh*t, he-he). Later on you discover (or rather you are taught by our grandmeister) that it actually manipulates a 2D array in memory called back buffer. And ta-da! You just learned a basic computer graphics concept. This "black box" approach is called "abstraction" in computer science and it is a powerful concept/tool.

So yeah I was a noob back then, and I'm still a noob on many subjects and probably will be for a long time. But hey that's the way it works :)

Also, learning is fun. So just keep on learning :)
If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain" - Morpheus

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