For about half a year now, I've been learning Java in school, or at least I was supposed to be. Fortunately for me, my teacher only wanted a screenshot of the program the book made me write, and to talk about the lesson.

My teacher made a big mistake however: He gave me access to all the Java files the book made me write, so I could skim the lesson, download the Java file, screenshot it, and talk about the lesson.

This has officially bitten me in the ass. I'm now expected to have a lot of Java knowledge, so I have to write a simple program, a Magic 8-Ball.
This is very simple, but I barely know anything about Java.

This was when I realized the secret to learning to program.
I have one week to work on this, so I got started with my very basic Java skills, forcing myself to write the program, despite not thinking I could.

THIS was the moment.

If you follow my game development, you'll know I can program in Python and GDScript, and maybe that I know how to program in SmileBASIC.

How did I learn to program in these 3 languages? Well there's a simple answer: Because I believed in myself.

Don't get me wrong, programming is HARD! But SmileBASIC made it seem easy to me.
I looked up what I didn't know, which was mostly everything, but I didn't let that discourage me.

If you want to program, pick a programming language, learn its fundamentals, and then just push yourself!
You'll be horrible at first! But if you stop just because of that, you'll never get anywhere! It takes time to get good, and a lot of experimentation as well.

If you want to get into programming, don't be discouraged because you're not a master at first. If you truly want to program, you need to get over that first hurtle: Yourself