-Sometimes we'll find ourselves learning something that's a dead end. We're not making the progress that we thought we'd be making. We're not finding it as engaging or as exciting as we'd imagined. We're realizing that what we're learning is an evolutionary dead-end in the realm of programming. What then?
+Sometimes we'll find ourselves learning something that's a dead end. We look at our progress and see no real improvement. We don't find the topic as engaging or as exciting as we'd imagined. We realize that what we're learning is an evolutionary dead-end in the realm of programming. What then?
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+Part of our learning process is understanding that our expectations of how something will turn out can be completely different from how things actually do turn out. We envision all sorts of rewards and platitudes that never come. Does that mean we're at a dead end? I don't think so. What it might be is a case where what we expect we'd be doing with our newfound knowledge isn't panning out. Or we may find that our expectations for how quickly we'd learn the topic aren't being met and we see more and more ahead of us. We may also expect that our career will be bolstered by learning this topic and yet all we hear from the job market is resounding silence.
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+Our engagement is related to our expectations. Programming demands a certain amount of fun and reward and if we're not finding the experience fun or rewarding then we're unlikely to want to continue being engaged with learning that topic. Our minds begin wanting something else to engage us and we crave anything other than to continue with this learning process. After all, shouldn't we be enjoying this? If there's no engagement and enjoyment then the learning becomes drudgery. We become distracted more easily while trying to learn and our minds drift away rather than focus on our learning experience.