Every google for help I do is useless. Each page is full of terms I don't understand at *all*. They're like "Oh solving that error is simple, just take the library and shove it into the jenga package loader so you can execute the lab function with a pasta variation".
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My body is tense. I feel like a shaken soda can. Angry tears are starting to well. I'm trying to install pip by punching foreign commands into this cruel black hole, dimly aware I'm probably making a hundred glaring errors I cannot possibly know about. I don't know what pip is.
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Eventually I break and post on twitter. People are split between being unable to comprehend my brain is actually this stupid and insisting I must be doing engagement bait, and a series telling me confidently that I need to this simple thing, but each recommendation is different
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I try a few recs that look clear and easy, but each one turns into its own hellscape - the buttons they told me to click on do not show up, I realize I don't know how to do the "input" part of the "input command" they told me to do. I can feel days draining off my lifespan.
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Eventually I just make a telegram group for people to join (t.me/+vzmvyweMs49mO) where it's easier for me to upload screenshots of what I'm doing fast, to a localized/central place so everyone knows what's happening.
This is the breakthrough I needed
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It becomes chaotic, several people all clamoring what to do at once, but in Twitch Plays Aella type fashion, somehow something functional appears. They collectively get me to install Anaconda and open Spyder, both of which look like normal human computer programs thank god
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I spend three hours under rapid fire questions and answers, I ask a dumb thing and a cacophony of explanations barrage my face like a bukkake of knowledge. I get stuff like what libraries are. They try to explain REPL to me, and data frames. Light breaks through the clouds.
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It's a little hard to ask questions correctly; lots of my efforts are spent struggling to get people to give me the "level" of answer I want. There's a spectrum between deep conceptual explanation and shallow functional one, and I want different ones at different times.
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I find the learning strategy that works best so far is I blindly execute a step they tell me to, and then once it works, I go back and re-explain each part of the step, and ask about why we did each part the way we did - both installs and stuff like individual words in the code.
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I have a strong sense of what I need to know, and I'm curious if others do too - it felt like I had a god of curiosity possessing me, that honed beeping in around questions like a metal detector. I had strong senses of "no, explain that to me deeper" and "don't care let's move on
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Anyway I managed to upload a csv and even looked at a few correlations! This was day 1, I'm feeling encouraged about more days. I'm also super grateful to everyone who's helping me, it's a wonderful favor and yall are seriously doing my mental health a huge service.
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Update: End day 2, spent 2 hours learning from the telegram chat again. I learned how to get specific info from various columns (count x in a column conditional to y in another column), how to filter columns, delete empty columns, and delete targeted columns. This is kinda fun.
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Update, day 4, probably spent 12 hours in chat total getting answers done, have figured out how to do a lot more stuff with columns and correctly save/replace/export csvs and generate a correlation chart. i am starting to get extremely excited about all this, had trouble sleeping
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I think, keep at it. I also think that learning programming basics is like learning conjugation or something in a new language. It makes the stumbling around later much faster.
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As a WMAAAN engineer 👨🏼💻 I totally agree with how difficult this is and how absolutely dogshit 🐶💩 the learning materials are
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You might want to give this a try: nostarch.com/automatestuff2 or review the current Humble Bundle with some resources that are really good.
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Aella all of this is just my standard day programming things and solving problems I haven't done before, and yes I hate programming
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You got this. It can be a real slow start, but once you crest taut first hump it’s a glorious feeling.
Just know there are a million humps after that, but you get better at climbing them. 👍
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If you're feeling frustrated you're already a programmer. That's exaclty what we do all day long. Try, fail, google, try again, success, edit, fail, google, all over again.
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This thread is amazing. Thank you for it. I know how to code, but I also know how opaque foreign technical areas can be! Simple things are taken for granted. Reading your experience was like reading a novella. It made me laugh, and tugged at the heart, and all kinds of in between
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That's a solid first day and you're doing things the right way. Find one thing that works, then make changes to do something new. Read a lot, ask a lot of questions, and expect to feel like you know nothing at all for at least a few more months.
Eventually it'll all seem easy.
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