No failure no success. Or "Failure is the mother of success" . I had a similar experience with my cs programming classes years back. I simply just stopped showing up for classes the second time and handed in what needed to be handed in and took my project exam and passed it all. For me programming theory and practical implementation cannot be forced it has to be learned at the page one sees fit. Also one year at that very first University(I changed my university but still same major) they had drop put rates on like 70 percent or more for first year students...

Anyway do not fear this class take it again and make sure no other stuff goes on in your life while taking this class.

Wish you the best luck and a merry Christmas

What's the saying? "Courage is being afraid of something, and doing it anyway" or something like that. You can talk about it all you want, get advice and insight and a bunch of pats on the back, but at some point, it's a binary choice: take the class or don't. Just take the class. You do know all the syllabus material. You don't necessarily know all the little side details about what will be covered in the class, and that's another reason to take the course. But primarily it's to get over your fear and put a little accomplishment under your belt.

I used to be intimidated by my college professors when I first went to higher education, thinking my problems and stumbling through their material wasn't worth bothering them with. Trust me when I say that you will get as much help as you ask for, if you're just straightforward with them and take opportunities to get whatever help you need. Office hours exist because instructors want you to learn the material and succeed, not because they need a reason to sit at their desks. Make yourself known to the prof, tell them "I struggled with this course last time, but I've been putting in a lot of work on my own since then and want to give it another shot." The moment you become more than just another face in the crowd, your chances of success in the course go up dramatically.

TL;DR: Buck up and take the class. You'll do fine.

So i decided to program in my own time ever since then and find out how to program games.

I even sneaked onto the teachers webpage and completed all the projects

Hell yeah ! I'm sure you will be fine

Some teachers just suck - especially professors at research universities.

If you've found that the material is not too challenging, then chalk it up to incompetent teaching, and move on.

^this.

Some courses just plain suck. It could be the contents of the course, or the way its been taught.

For example, a few of the best courses (as in, content of the course looks pretty sweet) my uni has are taught by the most boring and incongruent teacher I had. One time we were being introduced to Java (actually OOP through Java), and the teacher was talking about objects identities (objects = references, primitive types = values), so one of my classmates asks "So, if object1 = object2; means that both object1 and object2 are pointing to the same object, how does someone copy an entire object?"

I swear to god that my teacher couldn't answer the question. She started to talk about identities (repeating what she said 5min ago) and it said something related to the slide she had displaying by that time, which of course, had nothing to do with copying an object. To this day (course already finished) no one told us how to copy an object in Java lol (spoiler: it involves overriding an Object method).

Imagine that situation with every single question directed at her. You couldn't ask her anything. Only like 3 out of 15 people went to her theory classes, most of us passed the course anyway because the practice class teacher re-explained everything to us on his class and we could actually ask him something and get a good answer.

What I'm saying is, bad courses will happen, bad teachers too.

If you expect try to pass every course exactly the same way, you're going to have a bad time (had to do it ).

Pay attention to those courses you like, save the "good enough" effort for those courses you don't like, and if you like the content of the course but you don't like the way is been taught, its time for some good ol' self-teaching! (which you seem already doing btw).

I am willing to bet there are more professionals that had the same struggle as you. Every human will. I struggled in one of my CS classes this year. It was more of a theory class and I did struggle with the theory part of it (I will admit I absolutely suck with any kind of theories). Though in parts of the class we would program I felt just fine. I took that as the following: I need to start looking into the theory part to get better. Matter of fact I am actually thinking about retaking that class. I want to walk right up to the theory portion of the class and say "I'ma kick your a$$!"

I'm looking to minor in Math and my Calculus II professor that I had this semester told us a good story. She said that when she did her undergraduate studies in Math she said she struggled. She said she was a C average student yet she wanted to major in Math. She told us she struggle to pass some classes and did fail some. She remembers people saying she was one of the worst students in every single class she took. Now she is a very well respected professor with a PhD. She told us this before every exam. That if you struggle with this now it is ok. Just keep trying it can get you somewhere. It got her to a well respected level.

To be honest, I think you could take the course again and do well this time. However, it sounds like you've had a confidence knock - you jumped right in and got burnt by hot water.

I've done it myself when I took a course in artificial intelligence and got my ass kicked by the maths involved. I ended up withdrawing, and its always been on my mind as a failure and "unfinished business"...

If you find the thought of it too much to bare then consider an evening class or better still do distance learning. Just make sure you at least give yourself another chance because by teaching yourself when the chips were down, you definitely deserve a second shot.

After the AI fiasco, I decided to jump back in the saddle and took a much easier Interaction Design course instead. Its given me enough time to prepare for a second shot at AI...