Whenever I try to solve a problem or create/code something i'm always met with some problem that I just can't solve. And it seems to me those who are good at web dev are just a type of person that can do it, i'm always left stuck with something that I can't do, whereas other developers can do it, I just think web dev is for this type of person that can just do it, and it has no room for newbies, in fact even if you try to get help from people in web dev communities usually they won't help, because they already have expertise, I guess it's just their way of saying "we can do it, you can't, go **** yourself", I also have this belief that you're either good at/can do web dev or you can't, it just seems the ones real good at web dev were those that could pick it up straight away and do it, it also seems true of job ads, they want the best and you're never the best, it's just a type of person their looking for that isn't you. It just seems to me like the hard way of making money, too much people that are too intelligent.

Edited October 11, 20196 yr by NullDrone

"we can do it, you can't, go **** yourself"

I've done alright and I'm not one of the intelligent ones, I got very average GCSE's a C at mathematics which is considered the main one for software…

Your statement "we can do it, you can't, go **** yourself" Is totally false, have you not considered that many people have busy lives to live and can't spend all their time solving problems for others? Moreover nobody learns from being given a solution.  It's loose-loose.

I certainly didn't pick things up right away, I often have to go over concepts a frustrating number of times before things start to click.  I think the difference is that I know this is necessary and very few professional engineers grasp new concepts right away - I don't let it get me down because I know each time I go over it I am getting closer to understanding.

In terms of money it's better than many professions that require degrees for entry level positions where as a dev you can earn better than graduate wages with a few months of concentrated effort.  Saying it can't be done is nonsense, I know plenty of people who have done this.

Companies are always going to want the best within a salary range, the best paying companies will be harder to get into, they will expect more, not just technically but soft skills too — You have to provide value.

I try to say this in the nicest way but if you have this sort of outlook on things and it surfaces during job interviews then you will struggle to get hired, even if your technical skills are sound.

Edited October 13, 20196 yr by rbrtsmith

I get stuck on things all the time, everyone does. If you build up your knowledge and experience incrementally, you'll be able to solve problems more easily, or find a solution faster than you previously could. That just takes time I'm afraid. If you learn by doing, then you will eventually be forced to solve problems head on, and the next time you'll know what it is, or be in a better position to debug it.

On 10/11/2019 at 10:17 PM, NullDrone said:

Whenever I try to solve a problem or create/code something i'm always met with some problem that I just can't solve.

Do you have an example of what you were stuck on, or the steps you took to try and solve it? It's entirely possible you didn't break the problem down enough and tried to solve one large problem. It's easier to break a large problem down into smaller, more achievable steps, and solve it that way.

On 10/11/2019 at 10:17 PM, NullDrone said:

 in fact even if you try to get help from people in web dev communities usually they won't help, because they already have expertise, I guess it's just their way of saying "we can do it, you can't, go **** yourself"

I don't think that's true at all. In fact, several developers, including @rbrtsmith, have taken time out of their schedule to help me in the past and it's not uncommon in this industry at all.

It also depends how complex those problems are.  Even the best developers can't solve everything, at that point they ask for help, bring in an expert consultant who specialises in that specific area.

Like @Jack I also get stuck on things all the time, the learning never stops - you never really get in that space where you can just plod along as technology changes and most of us want to move up the career ladder.  As I've gained more experience I think the biggest skill I've learnt is how to more quickly google the right things to find solutions.

Like Jack says problems should also be broken down into chunks that can be solved individually then pulled together.  Lots of the things I have built would have been complete failures if I hadn't broken them down - and those problems themselves broken down further.

It's important to not jump in at the deep-end too.  Few places will expect a junior to solve anything complex without help.

It sounds like you should work on your attitude. If you are approaching anything this way, you are shooting yourself in foot while trying to get ahead. Not the best idea.

I recently saw this t-shirt. It encapsulates a lot of what goes into development. Most developers are just better at finding solutions to things that they themselves don't know how to do. Ask any programmer and they will tell you that they google for stuff all the time. So, it's not necessarily about your skill set, it's about your willingness to learn and find solutions.

I'm the lead developer of a public facing JSON API at the company I work for, this API is currently having new endpoints and functionality added for an App we are developing for our customers, one of the new features is for our customers to upload videos to the app, these then goes through to our API, and we then send the videos to YouTube, and finally, we send an email or text to our customers customer informing them they've been sent a video, which is hosted on a page on the the customers website.

When I saw the brief, and even now when I'm writing the technical requirements for the endpoints, the format, body etc, I'm sat here thinking how the hell am I going to do this? I've got absolutley zero experience with processing videos though uploads, especially from a mobile device, chunking the video, loss of signal, very long (time wise) requests, but rather than saying to my manager I can't do this, I'm researching, creating proof of concepts, experimenting, until I'm comfortable I can do it, and I can do it right.

Truth to be told. there are actually sometimes very smart web developers who actually can say "we can do it, you can't, go **** yourself", but the reason they are smart  is because they're "nerds" and they are sitting in front of computer 24/7. This is also the reason they lack social communication skills and say a lot of uncalibrated stuff. They attract what they are and probably don't have good friends. No reason to pay attention to them, unless you wanna help them.

And sure, coding / web development is not easy. Some people are more predisposed to that than others, for many different reason., One of the reasons might be the time they've already invested in it, be it through college math or some hobby at their home PC.

But I've never seen a person who've put time into it and didn't succeed. I know several people personally who didn't show any sign of being talanted, and on the contratry, I thought it's just not for them. They've proved me wrong. At some point in time, they all had better jobs then I and few of them moved to a better city than I'm in now. I still think they are untalanted, but they just do it.

My point being that it doesn't matter if you're talanted at web development or not. If you put enough time and don't give up - you're very likely to succeed.

But that's only my perspective.

On 11/11/2019 at 8:55 PM, SKITLZ said:

Truth to be told. there are actually sometimes very smart web developers who actually can say "we can do it, you can't, go **** yourself", but the reason they are smart  is because they're "nerds" and they are sitting in front of computer 24/7. This is also the reason they lack social communication skills and say a lot of uncalibrated stuff. They attract what they are and probably don't have good friends. No reason to pay attention to them, unless you wanna help them.

Yeah, for sure. I've talked to a guy who did masters degree in electrical engineering and got a very high paying job from it, I have respect for the guy because he actually helped me grow and was actually concerned about how others were doing, whereas there's a lot nerds who know their smart but are so selfish and arrogant, they couldn't care less about how others are doing, after all they're so obsessed with being the best and competing, it makes me lose respect for web dev in general, I think there's many selfish nerds like this, the rest of us are real people. Similar to these very succesful business people, I have no respect for them because there not real people, it's not just strictly financial/business careers have people like this.

Edited November 15, 20196 yr by NullDrone

On 11/15/2019 at 8:13 PM, NullDrone said:

Yeah, for sure. I've talked to a guy who did masters degree in electrical engineering and got a very high paying job from it, I have respect for the guy because he actually helped me grow and was actually concerned about how others were doing, whereas there's a lot nerds who know their smart but are so selfish and arrogant, they couldn't care less about how others are doing, after all they're so obsessed with being the best and competing, it makes me lose respect for web dev in general, I think there's many selfish nerds like this, the rest of us are real people. Similar to these very succesful business people, I have no respect for them because there not real people, it's not just strictly financial/business careers have people like this.

You should consider that a lot of professionals have their own lives to live — you don't know the struggles they go through on a day to day basis or how much free time they have.  I like to spend my free time with family and will lend a hand to those who I think will benefit from it.
I doubt people are not helping you due to some vision of competition, the people helping will be so far ahead they won't see you as competition it's more likely that they are busy or have other interests.   Maybe they have children who should always take priority over some random guy on the internet asking for help?

Not wanting to sound rude but you strike me as the type of person who'd pin your problems on other people rather than looking at it yourself.  I know I was one of those about a decade ago and decided that the only person who's gonna help me is me.  Funnily enough not long after I did receive help from people - they probably saw that I had a more positive outlook and was taking responsibility for my own shortcomings and trying to overcome them.

Hope this doesn't come across the wrong way.  I'm just feeling a little tired of people blaming for others when many of us engineers have had to work incredibly hard to get to where we are and people are assuming it's luck or we're just born with the ability.  We're not we just worked hour after hour and avoided procrastinating about how hard stuff is and how the world isn't fair.  In answer to that it's not.  So work hard and overcome that fact.

@rbrtsmith I thought people basically thought I was a noob so wouldn't give a damn about helping, a lot of the time when your a noob in a community people tend to be hostile towards or dislike you (which I still think is true in a lot of places i've been), you are singled out. I experienced this on the college course I completed, but then again they were probably too busy to help, the teachers however didn't seem to care at all about getting me through it, they could see me struggling, I usually just manage to scrape through courses. My situation atm is actually pretty worrying.

Edited November 23, 20196 yr by NullDrone

People will help but you have to meet them halfway.

When confronted with a problem do your research and see if others have found a way to solve it. Use there solution and see if it works for you. If it doesn’t you then ask for help and demonstrate what you have done so far.

This isn’t just coding and development. It’s the same in everything you do. For example, I want to build a brick wall. I’ve read up about footings, laying the first course, mixing mortar and a load of other things. The bits I’m not sure of I’ll get help. But if I’d asked a brikkie how to build a wall from scratch I’d probably have got told to bugger off.