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MixedNuts comments on Public Service Announcement Collection - Less Wrong
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I just did this. And I was surprised; this seemed far less inscrutable than I intuitively expected, having never read any code. My father is a computer programmer, so I may have it in my DNA. He is more intelligent than me though. Example, I once told him the three gods puzzle and he had it solved in ~20 minutes; he didn't even use paper.
P/S/A: If your work involves writing and you often find yourself procrastinating on the internet, buy an old laptop, rip out the wifi card and use it as your dedicated writing laptop.
P/S/A: When you need to get a large amount of writing done outside of office hours, go to some non-home location (a coffee shop not a library, as books are the ultimate distractions) and commit yourself to not leaving until you reach a specific word count--I find two thousand words is reasonable and achievable; at least it is for non-creative writing.
Also, If there is some fact that you need to research use the TK method to mark it down for later.
I'm not completely stupid. I used to be a decent programmer. I'm now a halfway-decent programmer. I'm unable to make any progress, and my ability to hold a job of any kind is dubious. What am I doing wrong?
Hard to say, but a few key pieces of information might lead you in the right direction. Is the inability to make progress project-specific? You can test this by doing something small on the side. Is it accompanied by an "ugh field"? Do you have non-programming-related signs of depression?
It's not project-specific. It's not repulsive so much as slippery - I happily begin working, but constantly lose focus. I was diagnosed with depression over a year ago, but I'm on meds and it's pretty much gone, and I don't have trouble focusing on things that don't require much insight.
I've heard that anti-depressants can have a wide variety of side effects including things like this. Maybe look into the possible side-effects of the one you're taking?
Not a known side effect of that one, but that's certainly a possibility. I'm trying to go off it, so I'll see.
You're asking me for advice? That was the first time I've looked at code in my life. I'm sure the textbook recommendation thread has something on programming. From what I understand, though, halfway-decent programmers are very employable at the moment, so either you're overestimating your ability, there's some other factor you haven't shared, or my intuition on the employment prospects of halfway-decent programmers (I assume this means close to, if slightly below, the level of the average pro) is incorrect.
No, just very haphazard. I know how to do many things, but I don't know how to do many other, often easier, things, and I seem to have become oddly unable to learn. Of course nobody wants a CSS whiz who never learnt HTML5.
Utterly random hypothesis: your odd inability to learn is caused by the tension between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. You got into programming and learned stuff because it was fun in itself, but when you started thinking that you should use your skills to earn money and started analyzing every programming-related action in terms of its money-earning potential, it stopped being fun and became ugh.
Hmm, one way to maybe get around this would be to start an intrinsically motivating project but limit oneself to the tools one has to learn for extrinsic reasons.
Then my advice is this: talk to someone who has the entry-level job you want and ask him or her what skills he/she needs to do it and what skills whoever hired him or her thinks one needs. Then learn them. As for the "oddly unable" thing, I suggest reflecting on how you learned what you are good at in the first place. If there's anything different about your current, ineffective approach to learning new techniques stop doing it. Unless you've recently suffered brain trauma, it's likely just some weird ugh field-like effect.
You don't provide enough information here. Your problem, and therefore the solution, could be pretty much anything. (Get enough sleep? Solve your emotional problems first? Find another job? Read the official specification? Get medicated? ...)