The short answer on whether Computer Science is hard.
Yes, it’s hard because you can’t get away with just cramming or last-minute studying, but if you follow the right approach you will succeed and have fun.
We’ll go over exactly what you need to do so you get ahead.
Ready?
Let’s roll.
Learning how to learn will make Computer Science easier.
It’s not enough to just review the slide that your professor taught with.
You have to know how to study efficiently.
Some quick gotchas:
- Highlighting is not studying.
- Studying with a friend is sometimes worse than alone.
- Studying with music you can sing along to is not studying.
There are lots of awesome tips everywhere, like the best way to study.
Lack of practice will make Computer Science hard.
My first programming class was in C++ and my classmates refused to believe I had never coded before because I was just-so-talented.
But what they also refused to accept was that right after class, I would spend five hours typing
cout << “this is my first program”
Realize it didn’t run because I forgot a semicolon.
Retype it and realize it didn’t print out my statement on a new line because I didn’t add endl. Then eventually perfecting it.
cout << “this is my first program” << endl;
This deliberate practice built perceived talent.
There are many classes that you can get away with without really studying. In fact, last minute cramming can get you through. But not Computer Science.
If you don’t practice, you will struggle.
Learning at the wrong level makes Computer Science hard.
Let’s start with a little analogy.
Imagine learning the English language. You start with a tutorial motivating you to learn to spell big words like ELEPHANT.
But it’s not working.
After beating yourself for so long you decide to go to a lower tutorial and learn to spell smaller words like ANT.
But then you still struggle.
So you conclude that you’re dumb because you lowered your tutorial level and still didn’t grasp anything. You have proof – negative proof.
But when a new teacher investigates why you’re struggling, they find out that you’ve been struggling because…
You actually don’t know the English alphabet.
Let’s bring this back to coding.
Some people jump into beginner programming classes in college to immediately start learning Computer Science (ELEPHANT).
Then realize it makes no sense so they give up because the idea of programming feels so weird.
But they’re simply working with something that’s too advanced.
Even introduction courses can be advanced because your thinking is not yet wired to programming in general.
I don’t see this recommended enough, but if you’re struggling with intro courses, you should consider Intro to programming for kids.
There’s no shame in finding something lower than the intro courses and starting from there to build up.
Learn with tools like:
Since you’re older, you’ll likely go through them faster.
But they’ll give you the much needed soft intro that makes sense and builds your appetite for programming.
Again, this has nothing to do with ego.
It’s your learning journey.
If you learn the alphabet first:
- You’ll gain the confidence needed to start spelling ANT.
- Then ELEPHANT, as your next big step.
- And some day long words like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
It doesn’t matter that other students in class might have discipline or area of coding you jump into, this holds for Intro to Python as much as it holds for Intro to Machine Learning.
You’ll learn more efficiently if you learn at the right level.
Procrastination can make Computer Science hard.
Computer Science assignments are notorious for taking lots of hours.
Say you’ve got a programming assignment that you leave until the last minute. And it’ll take 6 hours but you start 2 hours before the deadline.
Then you start thinking:
𐄂 I suck at this. 𐄂 My brain is not wired for Computer Science. 𐄂 I’m just way too dumb to ever understand what anything means.
But really, it’s that you’ve put unnecessary pressure on yourself and your procrastination has made you now discouraged. Moments like this make people wonder if if college is designed to make you fail.
But it’s not.
It’s super important for you to understand this and catch yourself whenever you experience any of the reasons why students procrastinate. Then put things in place to protect yourself.
Study Computer Science materials earlier.
Computer Science assignments are never what they seem.
They’re notorious for taking much more hours than planned. And that can cause serious problems and frustration.
Think about this: have you ever been caught in this madness?
You have something to do.
And you tell yourself you have more than enough time to do it. Then when you start, you realize ”holy mo, I don’t have any time.” You go through this stress, finish.
And promise yourself ”NEVER AGAIN!!”.
Then the next time you do the exact same thing. You estimate poorly. And you’re back to rushing again.
Turns out it’s a whole thing in Behavioral Psychology.
It’s called Planning Fallacy.
The planning fallacy refers to a prediction phenomenon, all too familiar to many, wherein people underestimate the time it will take to complete a future task, despite knowledge that previous tasks have generally taken longer than planned.[source]
What’s funny is that me telling you now won’t change the fact that you’ll still become a victim of it.
Sadly, planning fallacy also affects the professors that give out the Computer Science assignments. They dish it out thinking it’ll take 5 hours and then it takes 20 hours.
So imagine if you planned the exact hours for something that’ll actually take 4x the hours.
It’s things like this that make people think Computer Science is unbearably hard.
The solution? Start earlier than you think you need to.
Sleep can help when you study Computer Science.
It’s well known in Computer Science that you run into a bug or a hard problem, and then step away — maybe to take a nap, or sleep it off, you actually come back with a solution.
What’s happening is that in banging your head on the problem, you’re in intense focused mode and this can create tunneling vision to connect thing right away.
But when you step off your brain switches off to diffused mode.
In this mode, your brain connects things in the background to solidify what you’ve learned.
So, even though it doesn’t feel like it, you should learn to rest up when you feel stuck.
It definitely helps.
You can excel in Computer Science.
You’ve got this!
Computer Science is a highly rewarding field with lots of creativity and opportunities.
Change your approach and claim your own space.
I’m rooting for you!
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