How can I request a mentor/helping hand in my company to learn coding?

Question

I've had a very hard time back in my university during my undergrad in CSE due to numerous reasons. Added to that, due to the intimidating nature of our very first programming course instructor, I felt like a fish out of water when I tried to learn programming. It was like a living nightmare for me. To make things worse, I had very few friends who'd actually take some time to help me learn coding and overcome my fear for coding, and even they were busy with saving their own backs, others would heavily bully me, so I was virtually left to go on on my own.

I've struggled a lot to learn coding on my own and after staying unemployed for exactly 5 months after my graduation, I finally got a job as an Intern Programmer in a local software company. Since then, I'm still in the same company. When I joined this company, I knew nothing more than very basic C, very basic C++, a little Java (J2SE), and a little about OOP. I've tried to make myself more efficient and more at home in coding by going through tutorials and books, but soon got bored and overwhelmed by the sheer mountain of information, and got lost. So my skills didn't improve much, and my supervisor is thinking of moving me to testing team rather than development.

Rather than learning to code all by myself, I desperately crave for a mentor, who can guide me and help me, but not teach me,

1. to learn coding quickly
2. to learn coding in the right way without getting myself lost and overwhelmed by information flooding
3. to overcome my fear and nervousness in working in big projects
4. to gain enough confidence in coding

I just don't have any idea how I can approach someone in my team to be a mentor to me. Every senior resource in my team is very busy with multiple projects and hardly can spare time for me.

Edit:

Thanks everyone. I CAN CODE NOW, AND I AIN'T SCARED OF CODING NO MORE!!!! And now I'm a bit more confident in coding than the once scared and frustrated guy who posted this question :D. A huge credit goes to the people who gave me a rather unexpected opportunity to attend a Software Development training in Infosys, Mysore, India. That training changed me a lot and created a huge impact on me by boosting my morale. Although, I haven't yet got the opportunity to work in big projects, but I've proved my eagerness to work and improvements in coding skills, which earned me my place back in the dev team and let me work in a couple of maintenance projects. Also, I keep learning and doing projects of my own in my spare time and I'm glad I started to feel a bit addicted to it. ;) Thanks to all of you once again for helping me.

Answer 1

Have a look at sites like http://www.codecademy.com/. There are a lot of resources out there aimed at making it fun to learn to code. Try to find one close to the skills you're using at work and build it from there.

Once you've built up some confidence with a technology, come up with a little side product for you to work on at home. Don't choose anything too ambitious, and then use Stack Overflow for specific questions and issues with your project. You'll start to feel more confident in tackling the programming books too after a while.

On the other hand, if you try the above and are still feeling like you don't enjoy it, there is nothing wrong with a move to testing. It's a very valid career path, not too badly paid and you are likely to still have chances to dabble in coding if you feel like it.

Answer 2

I don't think you will easily find what you are looking for, mentor-wise.

to learn coding quickly

to learn coding in the right way without getting myself lost and overwhelmed by information flooding

to overcome my fear and nervousness in working in big projects

to gain enough confidence in coding

the last two points come with experience. confidence in anything just comes with knowing what you are doing, and having faith in yourself when you don't. I don't know of any way to learn that, but you might try some self-help books to deal with the confidence/bullying issues that you mention.

I don't know what books your tried, but I would suggest the head first series of books, as I have always found them easy and interesting reads. In java, I always recommend Bert Bates & Kathy Sierra, their book on the SCJP is fantastic. I do not know from your question which language you want to focus on, but pick one initially ~ ideally the one you use most at work.

However, as you will have noticed from my comments, I am troubled by your phrase "but soon got bored" in your question. I just got back from lunch with some consultant friends - every month or three we'll get together and talk shop. The two best - far and away the best - of the group will speak animatedly about developments in scala, of some obscure new open source framework, and all sorts of industry news.

I tend to talk about comics with one of the other guys.

The point is, if you are bored by coding ~ and look, I was bored silly by it, and found it unsatisfying ~ then you should really really consider doing another degree, or moving into a different role. You can always spin a story to a company about how coding taught you academic rigour and discipline, but what you really want to do is sales or business analysis or product management or painting or whatever.

That way, you get to "use" your degree, at least as a springboard, but you don't need to worry about coding. If you stay in code, and you don't like it now, well, the chances are you won't like it later.

Maybe you'll make some money and get to sit with other consultants and discuss comics, but if you went and worked as something else - something you loved doing - then you would end up with a satisfying life (and probably a bunch of money) sitting with other consultants happily & passionately talking about the work at hand.

EDIT

here, i watched this a few years ago and thought it was pretty neat.

Answer 3

Have you tried making conversation with some of the more senior members of the team, take an interest in their work and also get to know their other interests and hobbies?

I can only speak from my own experience but most coders I know are pretty generous with their knowledge and are usually happy to share their knowledge, especially if they can see a long term benefit in being able to share some of their workload with you, or just having a more capable team member in their midst.

Learning from books is hard, and I also found it tough to stick with it. Better to learn by getting involved in a community or open-source project online, or come up with an idea yourself. It doesn't have to be really complicated but just something you might find interesting to build - whether it's a website for something you have an outside interest in, or an application that performs some simple calculations or process. It's far easier to learn when you need to know how to achieve a particular goal, than just "learning" without a specific purpose.

Answer 4

From what you've said, you need a tutor more than a mentor. My recommendation would be to invest some time, and perhaps money, in organized classes.