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You feel the tinge of anger just reading that title?
It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? How aggressively we react to anything that even seems to question our intelligence. Something to pay attention to.
Anyway…
I remember the first time I questioned whether I was seriously not smart enough to be a coder. It was a very sobering moment for me.
My whole life I’d always been told how smart I was.
I’d always learned things really fast.
I’d never had much trouble with school.
In fact, school was kind of boring for me. I never studied, rarely took notes and only half paid attention in class. Yet seemed to remember most of what they taught and always did well on my tests.
So, when I was a few years into learning PHP and hadn’t “got it” yet…
It rocked my world.
It had me questioning everything I thought I knew about myself.
“Why can’t I get this stuff through my thick head?”
Then, one day, I hit rock bottom.
I can vaguely remember the code. It was something to do with pulling data from a database. I think it was a multi-dimensional array… and at that time, I was still getting my head around that.
I’d been battling with it for a few days.
And, I finally decided I was going to ask for help.
I usually avoided forums, because I saw how nasty other developers could be to “noobs”. And, I think subconsciously I knew I couldn’t deal with it at the time. My ego was already pretty fragile.
But, I was stuck and I just said, “screw it”.
And, I asked my question on a PHP forum.
And, I will never forget the response I got from one of the members there. It was the thing I’d dreaded would happen:
“Are you stupid?”
And then he preceded to rip my code to shreds and explain why I was an idiot.
I was humiliated. I was angry.
And I think worst of all… a part of me thought he might be right.
That I was too stupid to learn this.
That’s why now that I’ve made it through and know that I wasn’t too stupid… I vowed to try and help other developers get over this hump without being a complete a-hole about it.
That’s why, for example, I created my PHP 101 course.
Because it gives you the most important PHP skills you need to learn so you’re not sitting there struggling to figure it all out on your own. So you don’t feel like you have to brave the “wrath of the forums”. And, so you can be confident in your code whenever another developer happens to see it.
And, so you don’t have to put up with these know-it-alls.
And you can make the transition to coding for a living full-time much faster.
If you’re someone who has been struggling to learn PHP and ever questioned if you were gonna be able to do this, it’s the perfect course for you. It’ll put those questions to bed once and for all. Seriously, check it out at: https://johnmorrisonline.com/php
But, the important thing is…
That know-it-all in that forum was wrong. I wasn’t too stupid. And, I often wonder where he’s at now. Given how I know karma tends to work… I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the one serving up chicken plates in some greasy restaurant.
If you’ve ever had those kind of doubts come up…
I’m with you. I’ve been there. I know how it feels. Don’t let it stop you though. Use it as fuel to drive you to be aggressive, to take action and to push you to take risks and not hold back on chasing what you’re after.
You owe it to yourself to do this.
You don’t want to look back 20 or 30 years from now and wonder, “What if?”. I watched my parents do that… and it’s maybe the most excruciating thing I’ve ever seen another person go through.
Get after it.
Start here: https://johnmorrisonline.com/php
P.S. If you liked the show, give it a like and share with the communities and people you think will benefit. And, you can always find all my tutorials, source code and exclusive courses on Patreon.
