Programming skill progression?

[Shicky]

For a while now I have thought my generally programming ability is turd, and well it is. Im in 3rd year of a comp science course, currently on exchange in south korea, my results mean I am actually rated pretty highly as a student. Therefore you would think I would be reasonably talented..

I find with web design and that level of stuff im pretty good, can do pretty much anything given a reasonable window of time. But when it comes to proper software engineering (C, Java etc), I am balls. I have the ability to take something incomplete or something complete and develop it further, but going from scratch is a big no no. I just cant seem to fathom the first steps, even in an incredibly easy program. Given a long time I could probably get there in the end but again this would probably require some google work to get my mind going. In timed programming exams I crash and burn, I do it hard too.

Is it normal to start like this? I find it pretty frustrating as with theory I have no trouble but in practice Im no good at all. Currently doing a big operating systems project and I understand a lot of how an operating system should work, I understand the steps to complete each project....but to implement this in C code...im stumped.

I just need to get my head down and work much harder?

 

[Shicky]

You could try drawing out the software architecture in painstaking detail before you start? I write a lot of technical specifications and I get Blank Piece of Paper syndrome as well. Or do you find that it's more 'I want to do A, B, C, and D, but I have absolutely no idea what tools are at my disposal'?

Yeah I think I could do with getting to grips with the software architecture so I can design by hand first, but how do you learn this skill? I find that I have a fair idea what I need to do, some structures that I need to implement, what I need to use (in terms of constructs) but this is often only a tiny piece of the program...and how to make the smaller steps either side of what I know I need to create fries my brain.

With my project at the moment I understand the theory of basically everything, for example im doing a project on user programs. I understand system calls, arguement passing, inheritance from a fork() call. I even had basic code to compliment this, actually its advanced now. But alas the bits inbetween are a blur, my lecturer's english is impossible to understand when getting into the details of Operating systems and the entire course is in korean (of which i only speak sleazy chat up lines)

Essentially my team are even more poo than me so im going to score very little, not that this affects or bothers me, I just don't like feeling like an idiot when I know im quite capable normally