[gabelschlager]

I had a similar problem to you. While it was easy for me to complete assignments on Udemy or similar, I didn't develop a deep understanding of anything I am doing. What finally helped was doing the free Java course from the University of Helsinki (mooc.fi/en). What set it apart from the other courses is, that for each topic they are introducing, they have multiple, involved coding assignments and provide good automated feedback when your submitted solution doesn't work.

Of course, the beginning was still difficult. But the assignments were all solveable and didn't take too much time (on average), so I had a positive feedback loop that kept me engaged. Ultimately, just by the sheer amount of assignments and them having appropriate difficulty levels, I managed to develop a good intuition about why some things work and other don't. And later on, they also include slightly bigger projects so you can put stuff into perspective.

I do feel the problem with most online courses, that they often have very simple exercises (that can be easily copy-pasted) and overly long explanations. But the real way to learn programming is by doing it, not reading about it. Once you gained the underlying understanding, the theoretical concepts also become much easier to grasp.

[casablancatoast]

Really appreciate this feedback gabelschlager, and I've seen mooc.fi a couple of times mentioned. From the other commentors suggestions, it seems that just trying (and doing) to build something would be beneficial.