How do you keep going?

General Discussion Other

spaceghost

in General Discussion • Other • 2 years ago

I'm just starting out with Processing, and programming in general.

The problem I'm having, is not really that I'm overwhelmed, just that I look at it all and kinda shrug my shoulders like "What's the point? What are you going to write that's worth your time?"

I'm a busy guy - husband, father, employee, consultant. Time is pretty limited, but I am interested, and dabble with Arduino, Processing, Python, Maxscript, etc. But I guess I just don't know what the point is. To make something useful? To make something artistic? To make a buck?

You guys are incredible, as is every person on every other forum I've bookmarked. The investment in time is enormous, but what for? The tech and skills (debatable) get eclipsed every few years.

I don't know - I'm kinda at the "Why try?" point. I've got ideas - but in most cases, basically everything has been done. The old suggestion of "Identify a problem, and design something that solves it" as a way to learn programming in a practical way is good - BUT the time required to learn and code solution is greater (in most cases) than the time cost by the irritation it's trying to address.

Replies(5)

PhiLho

Re: How do you keep going?

2 years ago

To answer personally: I program first because I like to learn new things, and because of the intellectual challenge: I prefer to code rather than to solve sudoku or to do cross-words (even if I did that too...). Well, I just find it is fun, I suppose.

alphachap

Re: How do you keep going?

2 years ago

You program what your boss wants to, to get the $. If that's not your case, then what's the point?

un_bsd

Re: How do you keep going?

2 years ago

I like computers for movies, animations and graphics arts. Oftentimes, what I want to do conceptually is difficult for me to do, i.e. python program a solar system in blender as 'photorealistic'. There was nothing like Adobe Flash that's open source. Until Processing. Processing is like an open source equivalent of flash.

Once you find that you can use Processing in leui of Adobe Flash for your animation needs, you learn about Processing's extensibility and the hundreds of things you can do with libraries, it opens the door, like a gateway, into writting in javascript, html5, phython, c++.

Processing sits on a mountain top in an arid lava filled land deviod of native life called Mordor. It speaks in all the languages. I am just being drawn in, I suppose.

hapticdata

Re: How do you keep going?

2 years ago

self-expression, feeling of creation, feeling of being able to share that creation and experience with others. there are things that you want to see that you dont believe exist, so you want to make them. Programming and Processing are just (wonderfully amazing) tools to achieve that with.

drart

Re: How do you keep going?

2 years ago

What is the timeline for learning to program? This link about learning to program in 10 years eased a lot of my anxiety.

http://norvig.com/21-days.html

In terms of tech advancement I don't see it as a big deal. Processing is a great place to get started, as others have pointed out. What you learn from programming in one language is almost always applicable in others. As for Processing itself, most sketches written 4 years ago work just the same, if not better, today. You're right that applications change all the time but development environments change much slower.

I'm just coming up on my 10 years of programming and I feel like I am just starting to get the hang of it. I made it this far because of a lot of external motivation, looking at all of the great coders and amazing things being built. It's inspiring.