Frustrated!

[AnalCoder]

God damnit. I've been reading programming tutorials on lots of different languages for several years on and off. Having finally decided on what I want to do, I picked the language php to learn seriously, but I still can't seem to make anything even though I can understand what books are explaining such as what a variable is. I can read other people's code and understand what it's doing, but for some reason I wouldn't be able to come up with something like that. I've come to the conclusion I'm just not intelligent enough and should stop banging my head against a brick wall. Just want to see what some of you guys think, before I give up.

 

 

[gizmola]

It's pretty simple really.  Do you have a project to work on?  What is it that you want to do?  The computer language is a means to an end.  You need a project, no matter how simple, to work on. 

 

You will only really learn what you can do by trying to do it.  Along the way you will make mistakes, and hit walls, and take wrong turns, but you will find out along the way what you are capable of, and you will become better and more knowledgable every hour and day you work at it.

 

Like most things in life, it's a journey that begins with a first step.  It sounds like the problem is that you haven't taken the first step, possibly because you are afraid of failing.  While I can empathize, you have to realize that you are the one holding yourself back, and the fear of failure and hitting up against your personal limitations has become a self fulfilling prophecy. 

 

Sit down right now, and write down on a piece of paper a brief description of what type of system you are going to create.  Then get started on figuring out step one.  Don't worry about the big picture -- get one small piece working first, and this will start to snowball.