A Programmer Describes How He Nearly Went Insane Learning To Code

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"Software engineering salaries have just hit an all-time high in the US, so it's natural to think that this seems like a better time than ever to learn how to code." according to Lisa Eadicicco, Tech Reporter for Business Insider.  

With free services such as Codecademy and other cheap online courses, it almost seems like a no-brainer. But just because the information is accessible doesn't mean it's necessarily easy to learn.

Photo: Quincy Larson

Quincy Larson, a software engineer for online coding tutorial site Free Code Camp, recently shared his stressful and overwhelming experience learning different coding languages. 

It seemed simple at first. Larson wrote in a blog post that he overheard some guy at a happy hour talking about how useful the language Ruby is for automating tasks. He then began playing with Ruby himself and learned how to automate some administrative tasks for the school he worked in at his previous job.

Photo: Business Insider

Then, Larson started attending hackathons — events where engineers and developers gather to collaborate on programming projects. 

Soon after, a friend suggested he check out the customizable text editor Emacs, so he began learning about that. Shortly after he began to dig into Emacs, someone told him about another superior language he should be focusing on instead.

In his post, Larson said he went "nearly insane" trying to keep up and learn all of the languages he thought he needed in order to become a successful programmer.

"I tried to do too many things," Larson told Business Insider. "I tried to embrace a lot of the more esoteric programmer tools as soon as possible. But what I really should have done was get code up on the internet and get feedback."
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Source: Business Insider