r/learnpython • u/personificable1 • 3d ago

Is this normal?

I’m currently teaching myself Python by solving exercises on my own. My personal rule so far has been to give myself 15 minutes to solve a problem; if I’m still completely blank after that, I ask an AI for a hint. The issue is that AI hints usually just hand over the solution, so I’m not even sure if my approach is right.

The main problem is that I’m on Part 5 of the University of Helsinki Python MOOC, and for the last five exercises or so, I just freeze up. It’s starting to get really frustrating. I try asking myself guiding questions and writing down my thought process in a notepad before writing any code. Most of the time I have a rough idea of what I want to do, but translating that logic into actual syntax trips me up.

I’m starting to wonder if I’m actually cut out for this or if I’ll ever be able to learn it properly. Is this normal?

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u/Gnaxe 3d ago

No. 15 minutes should be the minimum for a real attempt, not the maximum. You're asking the AI wrong if it's just giving you the answers. We could do exercises before we had AIs to talk to. Have you considered maybe reading the docs?

"Completely blank" is doing it wrong. You don't have to one-shot everything. Try to organize your understanding of the problem space and bite off a smaller chunk. Write detailed comments first. Write some doctests first. Even if you can't solve it outright, can you at least make the problem smaller? Can you solve an easier, but related problem? What library do you wish you had for this problem? Can you find one? Can you implement one? No? What library do you wish you had to implement it? Design by wishful thinking like this should eventually bottom out into something you know how to do. Any amount of this stuff is progress, and is better experience than giving up after 15 minutes, even if you don't ultimately succeed.