For me it’s time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don’t understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That’s it. I don’t understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn’t give you anything.
My wife will hear a song and go “Oh neat, it’s in 5/8.” And I’m like “How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?”
Functional programming.
I’m curious if it’s the whole shebang or there are some aspects you do okay with. Immutability, higher-order functions, partial application, recursion, closures, pattern matching, tacitness, etc. I can also recommend not starting with Haskell. It’s a bit much.