I used to love programming.

Once upon a time, I used to love programming. I was learning at a pace that I thought was normal and well, good enough for all the concepts to sink in. I was really enjoying what I was learning, and there was no pressure to get my code running correctly immediately.

Fast-forward 4 years. I'm a senior in college. Doing a degree in computer science, have 5 programs due per week, and each of them is taking over six hours to do. Not only that, I have either abandoned or given up on close to half of the programs I have written this semester. I feel like shit for this.

Programming used to be:

1. Open the textbook
2. Read the concepts of the chapter.
3. Read over the example source code 10-15 times
4. Close the book
5. Type out the example program from memory as best as possible.
6. If forgetting something from the example, delete the whole program, read over the example code again, and again rewrite the example program
7. Compile the program, clean up all syntax errors
8. Run the program to make sure it works.
9. Repeat steps 1-8 until the book is finished.

Programming is now:

1. Open the textbook, go through chapter, slowly realize in horror there is no code examples in the book, just a very high-level overview of the problem, and not even pseudocode or proposed solutions. Could've been fucking Readers Digest for all I cared.

2. Check out 2-5 more books from the library, realize it is a waste as they are all covering different operating systems/languages/protocols than my program. Return those books.

3. Open a blank text file, look at program requirements pdf, try to translate to comments and pseudocode. Fail.

4. Watch several lectures about the topic. Get even more confused because they are not pertaining to my program requirements, nor can I make the analogy in my head to use their ideas on my program.

5. Go to the uni help lab. Oh wait wait, too bad. The TA comes to the lab once a week on Wednesdays, and it's Thursday. No one in there knows/understands what I'm trying to do.

6. Begin to feel creeping panic/paranoia. Am I a programmer or just a piece of shit who doesn't know how to code?

7. Regrettably go to stackoverflow.com. Start browsing code samples.

8. 3 hours later, Frankenstein code all over my program pulled from all over stackoverflow, compiles with about 200 warnings. Or alternatively, spits out hundred of bugs. Spend time fixing bugs.

9. Run this program, it does absolutely nothing. Feel like giving up on life itself.

10. Program deadline 10 minutes away. Just say fuck it and turn it in, with crazy comments in the readme about how I don't understand the requirements. Move on to another program for another class.

I just feel like fucking garbage. I've become fucking jaded. I hate IDEs. I hate text editors. I hate Unix/Linux/Windows/Mac/etc. It's all fucking fucked.

I used to like programming and coding. It used to be fun. The problem solving aspect was my life. Now I get nothing but vague ass requirements, badly typed in broken English with no further explanation. My friends are like robots they all seem to understand it the first time when its presented in class and I'm sitting here like a fucking chimpanzee trying to hit two stones together to make fire. What the fuck did I do wrong?