This may sound conceited, but a lot of things come easy for me. I challenge myself and am generally pleased with the results, review, and see what I can do better next time. Mud runs, wine and beer making, I’m never perfect the first time, but I get better.
Coding is a whole other ball of brain-burning, eye-gouging, face-melting-like-someone-just-opened-the-ARK, wax.
I can read it, I can follow it and see what’s going on. Don’t ask me to write my own. I struggle getting past 10 PRINT “Sean” 20 GOTO 10.
Not a big deal, as long as your brain doesn’t see cool app-ortunities (groan) at least once a week. I have 3 right now that are screaming from within my head to get out. It’s nice that they overpower the other voices, but they’re still annoying. So, I have to learn IOS development (I’m an Apple dude…no hating on Android or Windows…one thing at a time.)
For 2 years I’ve struggled through numerous books (I like the Head First and Big Nerd Ranch books) and tutorials on Lynda.com. Then, 2 weeks ago I found a tremendous deal on a Udemy course. What’s better is a friend started taking it too. (best text message ever: “(expletive deleted) coding! Live and die, mostly die, by the semicolon.”)
The classes on Udemy are really solid, and I love the way concepts are introduced. Some stuff throws you right into coding and says “we’ll explain later.” Others give you all the syntax but little context. Udemy, for me, is finding the right mix; build something, write some simple code. Make one screen, add a text box, add a button, add a field. Hook up the button to change the field to whatever you put in the text box. Basic feature I’m sure I’ll use 1000 times.
So, I’m excited. Watch a couple of short videos each day (there’s over 300) and take notes on what’s going into my first app. Not going to say a lot about it just yet; saving that for a launch page and introductory blog post. Since I want to launch by late summer at the LATEST, the wait shouldn’t be too terribly long.
Smart I am, but I am not a developer yet. You can bet I’m going get there, this year.