Learning programming from textbooks

>learning programming from textbooks
>all chapters are easy to follow and author holds your hand perfectly so you understand every little concept by giving small examples in each page
>at the end of the chapter there a couple of practice projects for you to make
>they're fucking impossible to comprehend
Why do authors do this? Literally every exercise project I completed was by combining most of the stuff from googling and little of concepts learnt from previous chapters.

that's a lesson too

you learn how to google for stuff you have vague idea what to do but don't know the exact syntax or algorithm

real programmers google shit every day at work

Yeah that process of not knowing what you're doing and then figuring it out... that's called learning.

75% of your time in a programming job is going to involve googling or trawling stack overflow for answers.

Was it "Programming -- Principles and Practice Using C++ (Second Edition)"?

that is how it is in university as well. All examples are clear and simple and then all exercises are difficult.

this is how I learned that I'm a brainlet. I thought I was hot shit through most of college because I got straight As and whizzed through all the assignments. Then we had a semester long independent project senior year where the instructor basically just said "Make X. Go.", with no directions on what to use or how to put it together, and I nearly flunked. I realized that I'm great at solving canned problems, taking exams, and all that shit. I wasn't actually smart, just good at school. And the skills that the real world needs are pretty much exactly the opposite of what you need to be good at school.

Had this experience with Java. Everything was going well, but then the fucking thing wanted me to make a java-based web applet. Unfortunately, Oracle thought it was a great idea to create a security system that made it fucking impossible to actually run the applet.

Programmers don't Google all day. We hat you're hearing here is a small group of guys on Sup Forums and not indicative of what goes on in the real world.

If you doing web dev, ok maybe. But stick to the book (your primary source), and stick to relying on yourself.

I'm on chapter 5 and the only practice problems I couldn't do was the prime number algorithm he tells you to google and make an implementation of.

"Think Python" is also a fantastic example. It's a shame that the C++ one is outdated and doesn't work with newer versions of FLTK, makings solid quarter of the book in-doable.

>read book
>the first 2 chapters are easy
>the 3rd chapter is suddenly too hard to understand
>drop it and never pick it up again

I'm glad I at least didn't pay for it.

What are books that don't do that and actually help you understand and learn to make things/think?

...

That sounds stupid, what you're proposing would mean writing unnecessary code and causing errors you don't need to do.

if by book you mean the documentation then sure.
but web searching gets you answers so you don't end up reinventing the wheel over and over again

...

Can you provide an example of a practice project that is hard to understand from said book?

This is why people should learn an "academic" language as their first language so they actually learn how to program rather than developing a habit of relying on the google crutch. You're forced to figure it out by yourself.

Good books have a few exercises for each chapter that are especially tricky. If you spend hours trying to solve these, that's fine and expected.

>what you're proposing would mean writing unnecessary code
Spending time e.g. writing a throw-away MCVE to narrow down a problem is not stupid. Quite the opposite.

My first programming book, i have nearly finished it and sometimes the exercises are difficult but if you are not a brainlet you can actually finish every exercise.
The most important think about programming books is to never skip an exercise even if it's tempting. If an exercise seems easy, do the exercise. If an exercise seems really hard don't read the solution immediately, try to find the solution alone without google, just don't act like a looser and do it. If you don't have this mindset you are not learning correctly.

It's supposed to be like that.
I remember Sedgewick put literal expert-level programming problems in the end of chapter exercises in his algs textbook.

Part of the idea is that maybe out of the thousands of programmers who try those exercises, one of them might stumble upon a more efficient algorithm for a known problem in computer science. There have been a number of algorithmic breakthroughs found by undergrads

>basically understand every concept
>cant finish the test to make sure you do

it looks like you didnt pay enough attention

this post made me crack a smile
literally everyone on the office

too busy googling shit to talk to one another
:'(

most times it is syntax i'm searching for.
know enough to get through it after getting a refresher on that.

Lol this is why Im still shit at java I can't complete the practice examples in a timely manner without cheating