A couple of weeks ago, I finished my Rock Paper Scissors game from The Odin Project which was part of their foundation path. That was a project that made me quit programming for almost 2 months. This happened because I got stuck and I refused to ask for help thinking I could solve it all on my own and when I couldn't I got discouraged and left programming for that whole period of time. It made me think that I wasted all my time and not learned anything.
At the beginning of June, I came back feeling motivated and even started 100 days of code, I took one class from Wes Bos's Javascript 30 and that boosted my motivation more but all that came back crashing down as I opened that particular project. So, what did I do? I kept avoiding it. I refused to ask for help even though I was in The Odin Project's discord server but I felt that I've already been helped in the first version so I don't want to look or sound dumb.
After some time as I was surfing the web, I came across the 100Devs Bootcamp by Leon Noel which also has a discord server. As I was going through the server, I found a channel called 'struggle bus' for people to share their struggles and I thought "oh, let me also share my struggles, maybe I'll get someone who resonates with me". Well, I didn't get someone who resonated with me but I got the help I needed. Later that same evening, I got a dm from a member of the server asking if he could help me. I was about to go to bed but that made me open my code editor, push the code to GitHub immediately and share the link with him. As he started asking me where I was stuck, I realized one of the main problems is I didn't fully understand the project so I couldn't show a specific part I was having a problem with. After a few backs and forth, he understood and started guiding me on the project and to my surprise, that project took us less than a day to finish. I was amazed by how much a bit of clarification can take someone. The two lessons I learned from that day, which I want you to take away from this story are:
Getting stuck doesn't mean you don't know something, maybe you just need a bit of guidance or clarification.
If you're stuck, just ask for help. There are countless people that are willing to help you. Not asking for help was what kept me from finishing that project for almost 2 months and now thinking back at it, if I had asked for help in the Odin project's server, I still would've gotten some amazing people that would be willing to help me.
If you're new to this journey and feel stuck, know that you're not alone, we all get stuck(we're all learning), that's part of the journey and if you keep going I assure you there are brighter days ahead.
I'm currently on day 21 of my 100days of code, if you want to follow me on the rest of my journey you can join me on Instagram . DMs are always open.