A little premise about my life, i'm an Italian 28 yo who lives in Italy, i dropped out of school when i was 15, there were multiple reasons, but mainly it was because of two major things:

My parents didn't care at all about my future and they just let me grow by myself and do whatever i wanted. I literally never studied in school, everything i know about the world, comes from the internet, and i only readed about things i found interesting, i learned english mostly by reading things here on reddit, and as you can probably see i'm not extremely good at speaking it.

The second reason is World of warcraft, my life was a mess and it was easier to hide inside an mmo then to live it, so i dropped out and started playing 16/24 7/7.

I lived like this for about 2 years, then i started working. I don't want to go too deep into details but let's just say i changed a lot of shitty works as you can expect from someone who doesn't even has a diploma.

It's been three years now that i work as a pizzaiolo, (what a clichè)i'm good at it, and i also kinda like it, i could probably just open my pizzeria, even better abroad, and just live a normal life.

The fact is that i'm not really happy with it, every time i see someone who works in a field where a degree and hard work is needed(let's say a doctor, or an engineer, or a lawyer) i always feel depressed, because of plenty of the bad choices i took in life, if i only sticked with school, maybe i could also do it.

I always thought i was smart, usually people tell me i am, i know a lot of interesting things despite the lack of education and i usually feel smarter then other people(i'm not saying this is the case, i'm just saying i feel like it).

I also did lots of IQ tests online, and i always scored above the average, i know that online IQ tests are bullshit but at the time i thought at least two of plenty i did were to some degree reliable. One was the Italian mensa pre-test(it doesn't report iq but the chance of entering mensa if you take the actual test) in which i scored 95% which if i remember correctly it's the best result.

This is only to pinpoint the reasons why i always THOUGHT i was a smart guy, not to made a statement about it, and to explain the subsequently delusion to find out i'm not and i'm probably just average.

IQ test are probably just an excuse for normal and ordinary people to feel better and grow their self-esteem. Just a way for saying:" Hey, it doesn't matter how a failure i am in life, i'm a misunderstood genius, it's just the world that is wrong, not you."

So in the end, what about programming, and why i'm really feeling dumb today? Well, i started programming one year ago because i've seen it as a chance to make up for all the years i lost not studying, and it was great.

I followed this subreddit, i found a course which i liked( it was the helsinki university java mooc) and i completed it in around a month, it was great, for the first time in my life i was feeling like i could do some real mental work instead of all the manual works i did in the past. I was really excited and happy but then, after the course was finished, i fell into what i think you call "The cliff of despair". I didnt' know what to do next and how to move from there and i just stopped learning programming.

I stopped programming till this week, when after talking with a friend he suggested me to restart programming again if i was unhappy with my current life. So i started with another tutorial i also found here, this one:

MITx: 6.00.1x Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python

Jesus i'm really feeling stupid doing this, i found it extremely hard in comparison to the java one, i'm struggling to understand. I mean, i understand everything i already knew from the java course, but i'm struggling in everything else, i'm at week 2 and i really think i'm just not smart enough.

For example, the newton rhapson or the inductive reasoning, doesn't matter how hard i try to focus on it, i just can't get it.

Now the problem is to understand if i'm just too dumb for programming or if the problem is my lack in maths that is showing in those things.

I never felt so stupid and miserable as of today, i mean, i always thought that the only reason i am a nobody is because i dropped out of school and because i played too much videogames, not because i'm too dumb to be someone.

Now, why did i write all of this here? What was the point? Well it's been so much that i started writing that i almost lost the point, i don't know, if you want to encourage me/discourage me about programming, or if you have some positive story about someone who succeded regardless the odds were not in his favour it could really be helpful for me now.

Sorry for the long poem.