It usually takes me a very long time to learn new a programming concept. Am I suitable to be a programmer? [closed]

Question

I admit that I haven't seen how fast other people people learn. But I in my case, it usually takes me a long time to understand few lines of a new programming concept.

For instance, I've been programing in jQuery and a little of JavaScript for some time.

I've been checking this Backbone.js tutorial. And it is taking me a lot of time to understand a simple block like this:

 var ListView = Backbone.View.extend({    
    el: $('body'), // attaches `this.el` to an existing element.

    initialize(): Automatically called upon instantiation. Where you make all types of bindings, excluding UI events, such as clicks, etc.

    initialize: function(){
      _.bindAll(this, 'render'); // fixes loss of context for 'this' within methods

       this.render(); // not all views are self-rendering. This one is.
    },

Even if it is all commented and explained (I still can't figure out what is el or why there is an underscore before _.bindAll, and I've been stuck with this for about an hour).

This really make me wonder if I'm suitable to be a programmer or not?

Answer 1

The fact that you've had trouble isn't all that surprising. The particular issues here that you are having trouble with really aren't explained in the tutorial, and the assumption is that you already understand these things.

I don't have nearly as much trouble with this, but that's because I have less to learn. In particular, my knowledge of javascript as it compares to other languages enables me to quickly understand what is going on.

I know that el is a object variable, that _ must come from a third party library, and that bindAll is fixing javascript's broken this. But that's due to years of experience. Back when I started I'm sure this would have stumped me just as much.

Actually, to me it looks like your doing well. You are actually trying to understand what's going on. The people who are bad coders and never get better are those who don't try to understand, and figure that _ and el are just magic.

I wouldn't worry about it. If you still get stuck even with years of additional experience, then its time to start worrying.