I don't have an ADHD diagnosis, but I have some suspicions.
I find I want to be doing things. Those things must be immediately (or very quickly at least) and consistently rewarding, or I'll stop. That much is, as far as I've found in the last few decades, an unchangeable fact.
That pretty much rules out studying.
You can learn by doing things too, obviously, but the early stages of learning programming are either sensible small steps (hello world, what's a function, etc etc) or gigantic unrealistic moon-of-an-exoplanet-shot projects (I'm going to build the next World of Warcraft by myself by next weekend).
The sensible small steps are exciting and give the doing things successfully rush at first, but that goes away fast and you need more.
You do hello world (wow I made the computer do something!). Learn how to use some conditions (wow I made the computer decide something!). Learn about libraries (wow so I can just stitch a bunch of these together and build the next Big App!). Start working on your big idea, quickly realise you're not going to be getting the success hits fast enough. Do something else "for a bit" and never touch your project again.
I'm fairly sure the only reason I managed to learn to code was that my first job in tech support was both easy and boring, and automating parts of that job was more fun than actually doing the job. Productive things become much easier when they're procrastination from something less fun.
It's taken me ten years, but I'm finally at the point now where I've built up a big enough skillset that I can take on projects that I'm interested in, and make progress fast enough that I get my fix and can stick with them.
There is also the part where the machine I sit down at to attempt to learn programming also happens to be the same machine where I do banking, budgeting, YouTube, Reddit, HN, porn, gaming, socialising, falling down Wikipedia rabbit holes etc. etc.
There are lots of distractions for the distractable mind.
>Productive things become much easier when they're procrastination from something less fun.
I feel there are 2 main types: ADHD and the other type that we need to respect and be kind to. I suppose there is a gamut of sub-types in-between. Come and enter the "realm" of developers!
