Reading large walls of text

[Anton.R]

I have a burning intrest to learn more computer programming, so I collect books, I have a lots of them about the subject.

But there is a big problem, whenever I try to read large walls of text I cannot remember even one thing of what I've just read, it's like im reading in my subconscious so that I cannot grasp it.

And I cannot keep myself focused on the text either, I keep shutting myself off from the book in my subconscious.

I have tried to take pills for concentration but it doesn't help me.
But if a teacher would read it to me, there are no problems at all.

Do you have any experience with this?

 

[Progster]

Yes, I don't like reading long walls of text either. Mentally, I need a break from it, and if I take my eyes away from the text, I find it hard to find my place again. Too much information in one go - it's bad style, it should be broken up into paragraphs. Also, it hurts my eyes to keep them on the text for so long, especially online.

If you are reading a book, use a pencil to mark the place you stopped reading when you need to take a break so you can find your place easily. If you are reading online, you can put the cursor on the place you got to.

 

[tachyon]

AR
I have absorbed many computer languages over many decades and - yes, it is difficult to absorb something like computer languages by just reading books about them. May I suggest -

• Read the book 1 time through, trying to appreciate it at a synoptic level. That is (and this is important) don't try to understand every detail, just get the overall picture of the context it lives in and how it works at a high level.
• Setup the working environment on your computer and start doing examples - start with simple ones and progress. I find it almost impossible to learn a new language as a purely theoretical concept. The fun is in actually doing it
• Use google extensively to find examples of what you want to achieve with the language. There are also websites (like stackoverflow) that are a fantastic resource for programmers of all experience to learn.
• Understand what other infrastructure is required to use your chosen programming language - for example programming in PHP might require you to run a web-server on your computer such as Apache and programming with java will require you to have a JDK (java development kit). Both free
• Develop a small project to work on as your first. Don't be too ambitious.
• Keep in mind that you don't learn everything in 5 minutes, be patient and don't be too hard on yourself - I've been doing it for (too) many decades.
• Lastly, it would be a very good idea to do some investigation into 'Software Design Patterns' to help you to create elegant programming solutions that are useful, elegant, and able to easily accommodate future changes. However my advice is to avoid those IT people who consider adherence to 'design patterns' as more important than delivering a useful piece of software to a client 'on-budget' & 'on-time'

Good luck

 

[Anton.R]

Thank you for your input.
I have experience with c++, and I've been working on quite a couple of smaller projects for learning purposes and I've been using google a lot for finding solutions or code examples, but I feel like I'm useless when I only know how to manipulate the functions to work with my project, I want to understand why it works as well.

References that I find in my books or on google are often very complicated to understand very depending on how the explainations are formulated, or what words are being used.

 

[tachyon]

Thank you for your input.
I have experience with c++, and I've been working on quite a couple of smaller projects for learning purposes and I've been using google a lot for finding solutions or code examples, but I feel like I'm useless when I only know how to manipulate the functions to work with my project, I want to understand why it works as well.

References that I find in my books or on google are often very complicated to understand very depending on how the explainations are formulated, or what words are being used.

As I suggested - don't be too impatient and try to focus your energy on a few technologies at one time. IT is a very big pond now compared to when I started. Rather than trying to eat the whole elephant in one bite, try to consume it slowly. For example perhaps mix c++/http/mysql as one project, get that down pat and expand from there.