Frustration during challenges and constructive criticism

[8bitPunk]

Hello,

With my beginner skill level, I am finding increased frustration each time you issue a challenge.

I would feel less frustrated if your challenges were more scaffolded for lower-skill users. A steady progression of hints could be added in to nudge people in the right direction.

Example: After a short delay, “All of the code you will be writing will be occurring underneath void OnUserInput”.

Ex: After a further delay; “The program will tell you True or False. You do not have to explicitly code these commands.”

Ex: After a further delay: “A working code will only add 5 characters.”

Etc. Etc.

During the current lesson’s “challenge”, I spent a good amount of time trying things like print(“True”) and print(“False”). I had no idea the code would return the true / false statement without further programming.

[Veronica_Zemenovich]

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I feel your frustrations and felt that way with the previous version of this course. All I can say is try to keep an open mind, don’t let the shortcomings of the course stop you completely from learning as much as you can absorb and post in here a lot as we are all in this together.

[daniveil]

Hi, I understand very well what you mean. There is an easy solution: just watch the video a little farther and you will get the answer without having to search in the dark.

But the thing is : searching in the dark, before having the solution, is very important. You need to imagine what the solution could be, “How can you write a single line of code that will say the user choosed 1”. You need to think about it. But not too long. Sometimes there are “tricks” that you could not have imagined. Get help if you can, but just after you tried to find a solution by yourself. Don’t stay for hours on a little problem. Read the documentation that comes with the video. Don’t read too much either. See what I mean. I like the method of this course because you can develop this balance between learning, searching, reading and making things happen.

[S_C1]

I usually just check in to see what people have talked about and thought that there is one more answer to the frustration beginners experience. Learning a language as an absolute beginner is frustrating, it was for me. The simplest of solutions can be an absolute horror show. I would suggest just go with the flow even if your not solving the content, especially if you have little or no experience with a language.

The reality is the longer you practice the easier it gets. I still consider myself a beginner but with a little thought I am able to muck my way through the challenges, but I have studied beginner documentation online for python and JavaScript and have found them very helpful for this course. The more you run into the same concepts such as boolean tests, (returning true or false), the more it makes since to you. The point is I repeatedly studied basic concepts regardless of the language.

I can say that this beginning course is introducing concepts just like any other beginning course. If the challenges are too much for you then just get through the course, then go back and study the problem areas. Go online search for more information on variables, expressions, operators or functions for C# because repetition is your friend. If one source of documentation is too difficult, keep looking till you find one that is helpful. There is no shortage of information on programming for beginners.

Eventually the time you put in will result in less frustration, it just takes practice. So hang in there.

[nhlboy2008]

Your analogy for “searching in the dark” is so true. I would argue that by them giving less information, you think even more than you would if they led you to the correct answer more directly. And that’s the whole point here, really, is self-learning. You aren’t being graded or scolded for getting an answer wrong. By thinking for a few minutes, coming up with the wrong answer, and then being shown the correct answer, you are LEARNING – which is what you want! Don’t let yourself be frustrated by these challenges but rather take them for what they are, learning opportunities.