I’ve been learning Python by myself for about 3 years now and I can say that I know quite a lot but I don’t really feel confident in my own programming skills and always after a while of practicing or reviewing I end up quitting because I feel exactly this.
I don’t know how to explain it, but I really feel like I’m in a cycle repeating the same noob exercises over and over again.
For example, lately I have been practicing a lot PyQt but I really feel that I am wasting time when I don’t learn a new concept or I don’t memorize something and I need to look at my notes to remember how to do it, and also that practicing with online courses, especially with Youtube is often a challenge because the authors do things differently and I get confused by that. And when I want to learn something new the amount of information overwhelms me and I feel tired because of that.
As a Linux user I know that what I just said is stupid, because for example it is impossible to learn all the commands in the world, you just really learn the ones you use most regularly but in programming I feel that for example asking ChatGPT (or any ChatBot) counts as cheating for some reason, I don’t know how to explain it.
I really consider this probably a mentality problem more than a skill problem because honestly even though I know I can I don’t feel sure how to program, many times I even doubt the name of my variables or my functions.
Thanks for reading my silly post!
No one mentioned “imposter syndrome”, so let me:
It somewhat sounds like imposter syndrome. The feeling that you don’t really belong, because you feel you can barely keep up with your seniors.
I’ve had it before and it sucks, but you need to realise that most of us have felt this way - you are 100% not alone in this.
How to get rid of it? You HAVE to realize that most of us have no clue what to do and are just winging it too :p