Hey Guys, I am taking the C++ course part two. I failed one of the sort arrays exercises, and i feel really embarrassed. If I fail this, am I bad at programming? If no, then why? How can I improve at it so I don’t fail it?
Of course not!
Programming is all about solving problems. Mosh creates challenges at every stage. Sometimes you get it right away, sometimes you pause and have to spend some time working it out.
I’ll give you a little clue. If you post your code to ChatGPT, it will tell you what’s wrong. 
Or post your code here and we can advise you. Show us enough we can identify what’s up.
I’ve been coding for 35 years and have written production applications in more than a dozen languages. I still find it challenging and I enjoy that aspect of programming. Yes, some things are harder than they should be.
You can spend two days building the app of your dreams and everything going great – but then one stupid button or one stupid function kicks your butt for a week. It takes longer to debug that one thing than it took to write the whole program.
Are you a true programmer? It depends. Do you like to solve problems and WIN? Or do you want to quit whenever things get tough? There’s no wrong answer here. People are different. But you can see programming is not for everyone. For those of us that are programmers, it’s always challenging and always rewarding.
Jerry
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Thank you so much Jerry for your support! I just have a few questions:
So are you saying that it’s okay if programmers can’t solve logic and it’s okay for them to use other resources like friends, stack overflow, this, and ChatGPT?
Is learning this logic important for interviews, you said you had 35 years xp right? What are the questions like?
P.S. I wanna be a C++ game dev one day and program games for companies like epic games!
Most companies find a few of the basic questions you find listed online. Some googling will help you find those. I never actually required technical testing when I hired. I can tell everything about you in a thirty minute conversation. But most employers rely on technical tests and algorithms.
Each company is different. Some look for a greater understanding of their business. Some are stuck on you knowing algorithms that you’ll never use in real life. They will drill you on the difference between sort algorithms and you’ll probably never use any of them.
One area that no one talks about but is the real decider on job interviews is your experience with specific platforms and libraries. Okay, you know C++. But do you know Unreal Engine? Or whatever other engine they might be using. Do you know the same utility classes and libraries they use? How fast will you get up to speed on their entire toolset. It’s much more than just C++.
Since you mentioned game development. That’s the hard one. Everyone wants to be in game development. Therefore, it is highly competitive, extremely demanding, and only the best survive.
Honestly, all you can do … is all you can do. Spend a few hundred hours on mastering the language. Spend a few hundred hours mastering a couple gaming frameworks. Spend a few hundred hours mastering algorithms and working coding puzzles on leetcode. You see? It’s too many hundreds of hours. So you just do what you do and be as good as you can be.
My early career was developing device drivers, performance testing tools, operating system stuff. I was really strong and no one could touch me at my company. Later in life I simplified and did some web development with HTML, PHP, and stuff like that. Now I’m refreshing with next.js and all that. I’m also starting to learn RUST. I can’t decide if that’s going to take off or not. I know C, C++, C#, and some Java, Dart as well. But since I’m basically retired, I don’t really have an objective other than to stay sharp. I ran my own software company for 20 years, but spent too much time running things that many of my skills have gotten soft. That’s why I came here.
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