How to solve the most common "learning to code" problems

Learning to code is hard. Especially true in today’s world where things constantly change and things seem to move faster than you can ever be able to catch up.

Here are a few common problems I see every day while tyring to help people learning to code, in no particular order.

1. Thinking it’s too hard for you. Coding is definitely hard. But let me tell you, if I could learn to code, you can too. There’s a steep learning curve, as there’s in everything you do. But keep creating projects, keep learning, and you’ll get there. Don’t get discouraged, we’ve all been there.
2. Trying to jump on the latest trends. The Internet is a wild place and everyone is trying to promote themselves or their work. Many developers you see “popular” on the Internet are more “content creators” or trainers, teachers. They need to always jump on new things because that’s their work. You, as a beginner developer, need to start from a solid foundation of fundamental tools, and not be distracted by the latest popular framework.
3. Keep changing the thing you’re learning. Mastering the tools takes a lot of time, and jumping from one language to another won’t do any good to your learning progress. Pick a niche, start from the fundamentals, stay focused. It’s better to know 80% of one language that know 10% of 8 different languages.
4. Thinking you need to memorize everything. Let me tell you I use Google all the time. I have a terrible memory. Sometimes I find a post I wrote in the past with the answer to my question. Memorizing is for school. This is not school. The thing you need to learn is the process, how things work, and how things are built. Then you can use all the books, all the websites, all the search engines to help you figure out the rest.
5. Thinking coding is a solitary activity. Programmers are a big community. Sure, we might just stare at the computer all day or work remotely but there are meetups, conferences, virtual or real world, there’s Twitter, Discord, and many other ways to get in touch with other developers. Find a community, make friends, find peers that have the same problems as you. Everyone loves to help each other. Even better is to find someone local to you. It will be more fun!