Down the Rabbit's Worm Hole

Productive failure is a concept that I am very clearly not comfortable with, and this class for me has so far been 99.8% failure. That, hypothetically, is supposed to make the successes all the sweeter, but most of the time I feel like the successes are nothing but flukes. I sometimes know why these successes happened, but that's not always the case. When it works and I know what's going on, there's another new addition that makes it seem like I am traveling through the white rabbit's hole into Wonderland. Unfortunately, there is no tea party, growing or shrinking food/drinks, talking animals, or bitchy queen trying to chop my head off.

It worked for Neo, right?

The white rabbit is quite a tricky little leporine that seduces you with promises of answers and further knowledge.  The same goes for working through programming tutorials.  They suck you in with assurances that you will understand the programming world more thoroughly and be able to apply what you learn to your own work. Well, as I go through tutorial after tutorial, I'm continuing to tumble through the rabbit hole getting glimpses of the furry little devil's bushy tail, but only that....glimpses.  I keep hoping there will eventually be an end to something, but it instead hijacks and takes me down yet another section of the hole.

I guess an example would be helpful here rather than my convoluted metaphor.  On our DH syllabus, we were to use the Google Map simple program. I had the hang of it and felt like I might actually be grasping (at straws, maybe), but then the next instruction to make it fancier throws me way off. There always seems to be such a disconnect between the two tutorials that I don't even have a solid direction anymore.

Can I use markers and watercolor too?

 

And so, I continue on with my "productive failures" while working through what the experts call simple tutorials attempting to resist the temptation to throw my computer at a wall. Perhaps one day I will catch that white rabbit and make him tell me why he's always such a jerk.