Too Stupid to Code

[Truman]

I was always wondering what is a minimum IQ that one needs to be able to learn how to code. So, I'm not talking here about the level of education, but about a raw brain power.

[wavic]

It's not about the IQ. It's about desire, learning, practice, work and consistency. I was thinking years ago that programming is something hard to grasp and only some geniuses could do it. I was thinking that you have to be a math guy, to remember every little library, and method of a language. Until I decided to give it a try. And yes, it could be hard but as said here if you brake a task to small pieces you can do it. It depends on what you want to achieve. Like building a house. You do hundreds of small steps and finally, here it is. A beautiful shiny skyscraper. :)

[allusernametaken]

SET YOUR MIND-SET RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!
although I feel your fear/worry/whatever we call,
we can do this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[szbeco]

You definitely have to try it out to find out if it's your thing, that's my opinion.

I also just started now, and to be honest one of the reasons I begin learning it because in the past I did so many things only for a brief amount of time (making gaming videos, prop making, drawing etc.) and never made too much progress in any of that mainly because after a short amount of time, I got interested in something else. So for me the obstacle was that I couldn't focus on one thing and keep a schedule.
But I wanted to be good in something. I don't like categorizing people, but still, I wished to be called a something-ist, or something-er, if you get me. Do something I like and earn money with it. But I was aware that needs months and years.

So I decided to do programming. I realised that it won't be obsolete anytime soon, and I watched videos of many fun things you could do with it. I told myself to spend at least one hour a day with coding. Only one hour, but that has to be done (I even noted it in my calendar and would line out when finished).
The thing is, after a time it will slowly start to grow on you. It changes the way you think, and naturally you get to know the language better and tasks became easier not just syntax-wise, but also how you build up your solution.

Didn't want to write this about myself, but personally I like to hear others people's stories about how they manage to do things which is difficult for them. I know your concern is different, but I think doing this one-hour-a-day thing will help you decide whether you want this or not.

Also, one of the most important thing in my opinion is to keep it fun for yourself. Like what you do. Make games, automate your lights in your room, make a database of your spendings and earnings; anything.

Even if you find out it's not your thing you'll learn many things. So go for it!

[perfringo]

One angle to look at it: to program one uses programming language. As with spoken language it not so much about what courses you attend but how much you speak in this language. In order to master any language on must practice/use it.

At the end of the day programming is an idea in spoken language translated into programming language. Python makes this translation relatively easy, but as with spoken language - if you don't have anything to say then there is nothing to translate.

Simplified example follows. Let's have task to find even numbers. We have list:

lst = [2, 1, 5, 6, 7, 10]

How would we do it with paper and pencil (how we describe it in spoken language) - 'take one number at a time, check if it's even, if so keep it'. How to translate it into Python?

'take one number at a time' -> for num in lst
'check if it's even' -> num % 2 == 0
'keep it' -> one can either print it out, add to list or use list comprehension:

>>> for num in lst:
...     if num % 2 == 0:
...         print(num)
... 
2
6
10
>>> evens = []
>>> for num in lst:
...     if num % 2 == 0:
...         evens.append(num)
... 
>>> evens
[2, 6, 10]
>>> [num for num in lst if num % 2 == 0]
[2, 6, 10]