this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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ADHD

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Im wondering if this is a common adhd thing.

For example, I have always wanted to program, but I can't let myself start with some easy gui building block code. I need to understand how the code is interacting with the computer itself and know how they did it in the 80s. Then of course it's too hard for me and I give up.

Or if im making music, I need to do everything from scratch the hard way, making it as hard as possible (and killing any creative effort i had in the beginning).

It's the same with anything. I can't progress if I dont know the absolute reason why something is being done. And if I do it the easy way, I didn't do it right and took shortcuts so it was worthless.

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[–] RamenDame@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

TLDR: commit to a course.

For the last two to three years I tried a couple of times to get into Python on my own. Each time I find the very basic steps extremely boring. And once I come to a bit more complex question I am like: you didn’t teach that yet! Since I am interested in biology, I want to look into data. I tried my hand on already published stuff but often felt like I am not making anything new, just copy pasting.

The last year I took 2 day classes and are now in a “full on learn 5 month from scratch programming course”. The first two weeks were rough because we went over the very very basics in a slow tempo. And now the “fun” stuff starts.

One day we had a a different tutor and he showed us that some cities (in Germany) provide public data to their citizens. And that this is a good resource. I checked for my city and I have plenty of csv files to choose from. Just waiting to be made into a graph. It helped me stay engaged in the first two weeks. Did I code it myself? Hell no. ChatGPT was a huge help. The haters will tell me I just “vibe coded” but I had so many error messages to work through I think I learned a lot while analysing the data and going back and forth checking if anything made sense. The gist of it is that I am now committed to a course, where I have to show up every day (online). I still often feel like a failure when I don’t understand a question and it is hard to judge if the others are as lost as I am. But it is also kind of fun and having others going through the same makes it more tolerable.

[–] Avalokitesha@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

For me the commitment part was the issue. I'm still working on figuring out how to trick my brain into cooperating with commitments. Having a team that was looking forward to my suggestions and ready to rely on it ended up being the one thing that worked. But this is obviously not easily replicable.

[–] RamenDame@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I understand that. I find it hard to commit myself to something which I don’t burn for. I can start a huge crochet project let’s say because I want to gift it, it has a clear start and end (starting a magic loop -> finished product). My driver for the programming was: you are unemployed, they got you the course, if you don’t go your unemployment benefits would be cut. And I rather choose my own course instead of being pushed to do something I don’t like. I don’t enjoy the programming, but I enjoy pretty data. If I was still working I wouldn’t have started. So the stars aligned.

[–] Avalokitesha@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago

Similar here, except I suggested a course and they accepted and paid for it (Software Testing). The programming is what I enjoy and want to pursue.