A Note on Practice and Persistence

form the praface of <Learn.Python.the.Hard.Way.3rd.Edition>

 

A Note on Practice and Persistence

While you are studying programming, I’mstudying how to play guitar. I practice it every day for at least two hours aday. I play scales, chords, and arpeggios for an hour at least and then learn musictheory, ear training, songs, and anything else I can. Some days I study guitarand music for eight hours because I feel like it and it’s fun. To me, repetitivepractice is natural and is just how to learn something. I know that to get goodat anything you have to practice every day, even if I suck that day (which isoften) or it’s difficult. Keep trying and eventually it’ll be easier and fun.

As you study this book and continue withprogramming, remember that anything worth doing is difficult at first. Maybeyou are the kind of person who is afraid of failure, so you give up at the firstsign of difficulty. Maybe you never learned self- discipline, so you can’t doanything that’s boring.” Maybe you were told that you are “gifted,” so younever attempt anything that might make you seem stupid or not a prodigy. Maybeyou are competitive and unfairly compare yourself to someone like me who’s beenprogramming for 20+ years.

Whatever your reason for wanting to quit,keep at it. Force yourself. If you run into a Study Drill you can’t do or alesson you just do not understand, then skip it and come back to it later. Justkeep going because with programming there’s this very odd thing that happens.At first, you will not understand anything. It’ll be weird, just like withlearning any human language. You will struggle with words and not know whatsymbols are what, and it’ll all be very confusing. Then one day—BANG—your brainwill snap and you will suddenly “get it.” If you keep doing the exercises andkeep trying to understand them, you will get it. You might not be a mastercoder, but you will at least understand how programming works.

If you give up, you won’t ever reach thispoint. You will hit the first confusing thing (which is everything at first)and then stop. If you keep trying, keep typing it in, trying to understand itand reading about it, you will eventually get it.

But if you go through this whole book andyou still do not understand how to code, at least you gave it a shot. You cansay you tried your best and a little more and it didn’t work out, but at least youtried. You can be proud of that.