Testing the limits!

Yesterday I spent 13h sending a nice message to as many of my facebook friends as I could fit into that time-frame. I made a lot of people happy, which made me happy.

I feel the exact opposite right now.

I'm suffering from a really, really low self-confidence. It takes so much to make me believe that I'm actually kinda sorta not sucky at something. Programming kinda made me feel that way. I haven't written much here lately because I've just been so busy trying to keep my head above the water in school because what we've been doing in school is nothing. The "teachers" I've had have been so inadequate that going to school felt like a gigantic waste of time. I've been in need of a lot of tutoring from the nice guys at StackOverflow. They've been really kind to me and taught me so much.

But right now I feel like the dumbest person on earth. Nothing has worked for me today; the tabpane doesn't resize vertically even though I've set everything properly (what is it I'm missing?!), I had to reinstall MySQL, I can't get cygwin to move into the Program Files directory and I've manage to really test the patience of my really kind and helpful internet friends.

I don't even know what a project like the one I'm trying to build is supposed to look like. I've been reading so much SQL theory that I feel like I should know this already, but I haven't got a clue on where to even begin to put it into practice.

I'm sorry, but I just needed to write that. I hope I'll feel better soon. I'd like to think that something good always happen after something bad.

One can dream, right?

It would be nice if I could manage to get a job working with Java already; I love coding and it feels like I will learn more and become a better coder if I get to go out into the real deal business. I'm going to a gathering on thursday and I've been toying with the idea of making a website for myself to have something to show myself off with.

It would be nice indeed if someone thought I was of the right material to hire or train through a paid internship...

So the design I've worked up so far looks something like this:

"For dummies" is not for dummies

And it's definitely not for smarties either. I'm reading a book out of the series "for dummies" and it really baffles me how bad this book is. I already kinda have an idea about what the subject is about, and I know most of the best practices for the tasks described in them.

If you are struggling with a subject and want to learn more about it, do not buy a "for dummies" book. It will only make you feel more dumb and confused than you already are. And it's NOT because the book is overly complicated; it's just poorly written.

I've just shifted through 40 pages of utter and pure bull that won't teach you anything and has little to no relevance for the subject you're studying. It includes a role-play and a long rant of how awesome you're gonna be when you've read this book. It isn't, because following those 40 pages, is a on-and-off continuation of the role-play mixed with bad implementations of the code. They show you some concepts of the subject at hand but never really explain what the red thread for the subject is.

The pedagogy is null.
The facts are null.
Any pattern for the concept is null.

I'm getting an awful lot of NullPointerExceptions from a book that's supposed to to teach patterns, design, and structure.

And that is an issue because the readers the book is targeting can not tell that the information is faulty, that the pedagogy is bad or that it isn't their fault that a book marketed "for dummies" makes them feel more stupid. That's a horrible trait for a book to have, and it strongly discourages people from learning. You shouldn't have to feel that you're too dumb to learn something just because you read a bad book.

The only dummies relating to that book, is the one who let the books be published with such poor and confusing content.

Living the code life

Last week I lived code and stress, and today I've finally sent in the one missing piece for a grade. I really hope I can pass that course. We have now moved on to the next one, which is databases, huzzah! I kinda like databases so it's gonna be fun to learn this, and it's gonna be nice to see what the new teacher has to offer.

In the meantime, read, read, read, and code, code, code!

Stress relieved with memes

I'm way in over my head busy right now with my current course and lack of good teaching. I'm trying to learn how to use the Spring framework with thymeleaf, but it's not really going my way... got 4h of sleep then I woke up from my head trying to generate the code and figuring out the structure of it all in my head. I'm stressed and it's kinda crippling me a little. So, for this course, and this one alone, I'd be happy if I could even get a grade at all.

I would have been done last week if I were allowed to just write it without a framework :/

Or because I'm just kind of dumb:

Productive weekend++

This weekend and first few days of the week has been pretty nice. I've learned a few new things and the design for the webshop is pretty much done. Time to figure out how to display the items!

Now I'm trying to read up on JavaScript and get that stuff working.

I'm so tired, but at the same time, I feel so good.

Why do they ask why?

Something that frustrates my learning is that people always question why I want to know the things behind the things, and not just use the simple shortcuts. As an example: I want to know how to build and run a server from my home. Not because I have to; I don't even pursue a career in server building and handling, I just wanna know how to do it, because it's fun.

And that's the whole thing; it's fun. Knowing things, and doing things is fun.

But it frustrates me, like when I asked a question on StackOverflow about the behaviors of the <div> element in a certain situation. Now, I do give that I'm very bad at explaining things (I must be since people very often don't understand what I'm talking about) so there are some misunderstandings there, but what I got was a lot of people who wanted to slap me the code fix with remarks like "don't use that attribute, it's bad" but not why, nor did anyone explain why the elements are behaving in the way they are. I eventually gathered why from the bits and pieces they gave me, but the actual answers ended up in the comments, not the answers. But this happens a lot.

Another example is that I've been looking around for some people experienced in building web shops to perhaps get some tips and pointers. My main concern is safety and encryption, and I'm still looking for someone to have code conversations about that. But what I met with has more or less only been (there actually was one guy who gave me some useful pointers) people saying "don't reinvent the wheel, use this finished stuff" where as I'm looking to build it from the ground up to really fully understand what I'm doing and how it works.

I want to make it very clear though; I'm not demanding there to be people throwing help at me. As the one asking for help and conversational partners, I am dang happy for whatever people choose to throw at me. I'm just curious as to why people always almost try force me to use finished solutions and discourage me from learning how it's done.

And I can't help but to think, but what if I want to be the one to make those finished solutions for you? What is the harm of learning it? And why am I greeted with sighs and discouragement?