Learn, Forget & Repeat. My vicious cycle

So early this year I began using FCC for the first time. I’ve learned to code many times in my life, then dropped it for several months or years only to get back and don’t remember anything, the logic I tend to recall, but nothing about the syntax of the language itself.

Back in February 2017 I sat down for many hours a day probably for 2 weeks or so and got to the Wiki viewer project. It took me longer than I would have liked, other things came up in life and I dropped the momentum yet again. I tried retaking the projects and nope, pretty much all gone, when reading the code I understand what’s it doing, but writing it from scratch nothing comes to my mind, so I started all over again last week, but this time slower. Reached the Tribute page today

I’ve always enjoyed programming I initially learned C, C++, VB(before.net) even old and simple Basic back in the 90 I even tried to get into assembler when I was sort of good and trying to mess with software and managed to do very simple things like avoiding expiration on software triails and things like that, but I get into the bad habit of not continuing and when I starting getting the grasp of it I don’t continue. Learning again from scratch is a pain specially as I get older.

I had the good fortune that I landed a very good job back when I was younger with a fortune 50 company while living in a 3rd world country, due to my extensive knowledge in many IT related topics mostly Hardware and infrastructure and I’ve also been very good at my jobs.(based on my performance reviews over the years not my opinion) . This helped me grow significantly from where I initially started.

15 years or so have passed, I am currently in a very comfortable place, to comfortable I would say, where I am responsible of many countries and have folks reporting to me from various parts of the world. The job has become so easy for me that I barely have to work, everything runs smooth with my team and I have got many hours of free time on my hands. I think many people would actually like to be in a position earning a very good salary and yet don’t have to kill yourself working, but it’s not all nice and shiny.

All this comes at a cost, you become complacent and stop self-improving. I used to be the “goto guy” for any IT related stuff, showed up at work at before 6AM left at after 8PM. Even had 36 hour shift because of major projects that required everything done over 1 day or night (IT infrastructure changes) and I actually loved it. Now IF I go into work it’s not more than 4-5 hours and yet my team and all my projects do fine.

After doing what I could probably described as “Soul searching”, what I found out was although I’m doing my job good enough to get kudos from time to time, I’m extremely unmotivated. It simply doesn’t fulfill me any longer. There are many reason why this probably happened, but in the end, I believe this all comes down that I started as someone working hands on in the Tech world and early on I realized that as a Tech, at least where I live, I would never make the big bucks and moved quickly into the management branch, and turns out I was actually good at it. I really enjoyed everything that came with the roles, but I missed getting my hands into the tech stuff myself.

Initially when I started in the company I planned my path to become CTO of a major company in the next 20 years. On year 10, after starting at entry level Tech position I was in a IT Director position and VP and Sr. VP didn’t look that far away. Now that doesn’t interest me one bit regardless of the salary.

I believe I need a change and I don’t want to just go to a different company and start all over again, getting to know everyone and you being known to perform just managerial and decision-making tasks. I know I will just remain complacent and being new, regardless of your positions, doesn’t play well.

What I would love is to work in a big development company or have my own business, however I never fully got into programming to be an “expert” just learned the basic every time on many languages.

I’m getting tired of this Learn, Forget & Repeat cycle I’m in on the Development world, but this time I really want to push forward. I realize I have a great opportunity where money is not an issue as a I have a stable job, which I did work my ass off to get initially and I got the time to learn. Hopefully the 42nd time is a charm (it’s been probably more than that).

I know more than someone will be pissed that I haven’t taken advantage of the lucky situation that I’m at. I try to think how I would fell when I started in the IT world and I know younger me would be freaking pissed at present me, more like disappointed I would say, but I write all this because I’m interested in knowing if someone as gone through something similar where you are actually pretty successful in your current job/role, but you wanted to move into the development world and you did so successfully. I would love to hear the story, I enjoy so much reading people’s success story after struggling in life or not finding a good job, I’m not in that situation fortunately but it deeply inspires me. And I know my situation could change at any time.

I’m also writing this as my first post so I can remind myself of what I feel right now and what I know deep down is what I really want. Hopefully in a few years I can read this again and either hate myself for just venting and doing nothing or looking back and say, well that was my turning point and I actually did it.

Thanks in advance for anyone sharing their story, really looking forward to read some.

I forget programming - anything that requires steps to do, so even how to cook certain dishes, even simple ones - if I don’t do it for a long time.

It sounds like you go through periods where you devote several hours to relearning programming, then don’t do it at all. I would suggest working on your programming for a minimum amount of time each day, or at least a few days each week. Even half an hour would keep things fresh in your mind and allow you to progress. You can always spend more time than that when you feel like it, just so you put in at least regular sessions every week.

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I stopped doing coding for a month and forget how to do some of html/ js. This made it hard to do basic algorithm. I turned to gitter for help. Since programming contains massive amounts of ego, people either sat back and told me to quit programming, or just ignored me. When i was helped, it was poorly explained responses or i was just given the answer. They made it harder and harder to do each challenge which caused me to ask for more help, thus, i was accused of being a troll. I was later banned by a abusive moderator who lied about me being a troll to everyone. He was too lazy to discuss my ban because he was too busy talking about me in the main chat. I kept trying to discuss my ban with this mod, and was turned down and were told that i was BS and i should just “shut up” and leave. The sad part is, most of the people who did this were top FCC members. This mod will get away with this and will do it probably to many other people. Luckely God see’s everything, and will deal with him more then i ever could by reporting him and getting involved with that drama.

Ever since i quit Gitter and focused on FCC i have been a lot more productive, and i have done so much better. Just stay focused on FCC and programming. Use your Hours of free time to do this. Even people who appear to be pros might not know what their doing. Stay strong :slight_smile:

Its impossible to keep with knowledge you dont maintain. If you find yourself forgetting web dev things and want to get that knowledge back, find a project. Like a real project. Set a goal.

For example, im making a fun idle rpg website called countyourblessings. no its not a religious site (first question people ask)
Dont search for it, still in development and I havnt gotten the domain yet.

I dont work on it 24 hours a day. Its a passion project and one day I hope to finish it. On my free time I do FCC and work towards the end goal project, adding little things here and there.

The whole point is… if your not motivated then you have to find out why your not motivated when you once were. If you enjoyed programming before, what caused that to go away? Work? Sometimes the fun is no longer fun when you make money from it. You just have to find that passion project and hopefully that will re-ignite the candle.

Of course if this is no longer the thing, dont feel pressured to keep doing it. I know sometimes it feels like “im the IT guy… I cant NOT be the IT guy.” but thats not always the case. I just recently quit my job to focus full time on web and game development. I had saved up enough to last me quite a bit. I would just be sitting at my desk, not even really doing much, but the whole ideal was just exhausting.

Not saying you should quit your job, just saying that people change. Nothing wrong with that. Still if you DO want to reignite that. Find your passion project. Get the creative juices flowing again.

Then again what do I know, Im just some dude on the internet. :wink:

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Just yesterday, I was looking at my tic tac toe project written in ruby 6 months ago, and I literally have no idea what the code does since I stopped writing ruby.
.
That’s why I decided to only focus on fcc and javascript rather than learn multiple languages and keep forgetting the syntax and best practices

same. I made a game in cpp called rogue duels. Basically you created a character, give it an army, and watch it fight other characters and armys. A fun fantasy army simulator before fun army sims were cool.

I look back and I have no idea whats going on.

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Thanks “dude from the internet” I appreciate your comments and I do believe you are spot on, and I have something in mind which I’ve been wanting to do for a while now and probably that project can keep me busy for months or years assuming I get to the point where I know enough to get it working as it can be quite complex.

Yep I think the mistake I’ve done so many times is that I take too much in at once, I can sit 8-10 hours straight from the get-go then if I bump into something challenging and I noticed the concepts haven’t fully settled in my mind and it can lead to frustration and I say I’ll do it later, and later becomes never. I’ve taken a different approach this time, which is not do so much but enough for me motivated for the next day and focus more time on the projects to make them better and not just to make them look “ok”

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