Error: you have no clue what you are doing

Ever since week two when I had to dramatically adjust my learning blog goals little progress has been made.  Part of that is because I don't know what progress would look like in my current goals.  My main source of instruction has been this udemy course.  I have listened to hours of a man with a British accent and slow monotone voice put me to sleep explaining how to code in Java.  On top of that he likes to play slow classical music at the beginning and end of every tutorial. I also have done some of the learning modules at codecademy.  These two sources of learning were so different on the code they started with that it hurt more that helped.

I have gone through 15 of the Udemy tutorials where he has explained the different elements of java code.   I have mirrored his code on my computer and have had general success replicating his programs.  This week I wanted to take all the code I had learned so far and write a program of my own that could be used in Seminary.

It was a massive failure.

What is worse is that I don't know why or where to begin to try to fix it.  In a moment of frustration that I have so little to show for this learning blog assignment, I went and sat down at the piano and practiced a few songs.  I regret not having chosen that at the outset but with one week left in the assignment I didn't seem right to switch.

In hindsight I should have also listened to this question Gisela asked back in the proposal: " I know there should be plenty of people willing to help in through the discussions in coursera. But besides these resources, is there anyone you can get assistance from in case you need it? I mean, a friend, co-worker, relative, ex-classmate."  My source of learning has been prerecorded lectures, precoded practices, and preposted questions on discussion posts.

I realized how important live legitimate peripheral participation is.  The are many basic questions that I would like to ask a real person about java coding.  True that you can search for answers on discussion boards and instructional manuals but there is something of value about the personal interaction in learning that has been missing for me.  Alas, there are midwives in Mexico, tailors in Libera, but no java programmers in Fruita.