It takes hundreds or thousands of hours of practice before you are able to program flawlessly without excessive mental strain, which is where I want yo to end up There is, inevitably, a wide range in programming skill among students at the beginning of the course. Therefore you should not expect to have to spend the same amount of time practising as your neighbour does. Time spent now will pay you back in the future. Employers tell me that a small fraction of their programming work force provides almost all the innovation in their products. I want every one of you to belong to this elite group.
Programming is primarily an act of communication.
What you write communicates with the computer, with humans who use the program, and with other humans who maintain and modify it. To be a good programmer you must write programs that communicate effectively. If a marker misunderstands something you have produced then you have failed to communicate. Pay attention to these failures and use them to improve your communication skills. Learning to use available resources is part of this course.