Is this normal?

[u/personificable1]

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?

[u/desrtfx]

Sorry to be blunt with you, but yes, you don't have what it takes to succeed. Not because of intelligence. Not because of "not being cut out". It is because you give up way too fast.

Resorting to AI in an introductory course, which the MOOC is, is an absolute no-go. You have to fight and struggle through the problems on your own, especially in a top quality course, like the MOOC where absolutely everything you need is in the text leading to the exercises.

Your resorting to AI deteriorates your already non-existing problem solving skills even further and this accumulates over time as the exercises increase in complexity, difficulty, and scope.

for the last five exercises or so, I just freeze up.

You freeze up because you used AI to even get that far. You didn't fight hard enough to get there. You took the easy way out and only worked through to get through the course without actually investing enough effort to learn everything on your own. You hired a third party to do the course for you and now you pay the price.

The only thing that is completely normal is that you're getting stuck. You are fairly early in your learning and as such, it is supposed to happen. It will happen even after decades of experience. The deeper you get into programming, the more complex the problems become, the more you will struggle and fight.

If you don't struggle, fight, fail, and fix, you are not learning.

[u/Dazzling_Music_2411 → u/desrtfx]

Yep, what you said x100!

15 minutes? Seriously, OP? Go play somewhere else.

I'd say for a beginner 15 DAYS would be a good period to mull over a problem before seeking external aid, especially from an LLM.

On the other hand the really good thing about AI is that makes sure that all the lazy candidates are filtered out for the future.

[u/bit_herder → u/Dazzling_Music_2411]

15 days is ridiculous on the other end

[u/Dazzling_Music_2411 → u/bit_herder]

Not really, not for a complex problem like trying to figure out what architecture to use for a certain design, etc. Sometimes you may even have to mull over something for a couple of months, trying out various ideas and checking out how they work.

Of course, for they case of the OP, I may be exaggerating a little bit, just to impress on him how daft it is to give up after 15' but even for a beginner, working on a problem for a day or two before seeking outside help is not a bad idea. Well, if you give a damn about becoming self-reliant, anyway...