The thing I struggle with most is staying up-to-date. It's hard to code from 9-5 and come home at night and continue to learn. It's important to maintain a healthy work-life balance, and I still struggle with this. What is the hardest thing you've experienced on your coding journey?
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Top comments (70)
Usually they (bosses) think not, but learning constantly is part of the job and should to be done in working hours, precisely to have this work-life balance.
My problem is opposite, my employees don’t spend time to learn anything and they always come with execuse as they had so much to code!! I constantly remind that 80% learning and 20% coding will yield better results then 1% learning and 99% coding.
Just changing jobs now and this is one of my parting words to my last boss. I recommended 80% is the max anyone should be specifically on work, then 20% learning, essentially every Friday should be devoted to upskilling and presenting what you learned. Code reviews (on pull requests) should be super standard and if your not doing this, seriously make a change.
Try organizing them knowledge sharing sessions. Do it in working hours, so you actually show it that's important for you that they learn.
You can also try organizing coding dojos.
Buy them books, or online library subscription.
You think I haven’t tried all this? It’s just their habit which is very difficult to change as they grow older.
When you say "my team", do you mean you manage them or you are their teammate?
I said, 'my employees', so I am not directly managing teams, but yes, in a way, I do manage.
This is super strange, unusual 🤔 They develop a good code? Not a deprecated code? You always can offer some conference/workshop tickets, it's a great way to do a pause on development and have a good time to learn.
Learning has to be everyday, I can't send them to conference/workshop everyday !! Also if they don't know how to learn by themselves, they will not do anything on conference/workshop.
Try starting a Friday lunch and learn. Then it’s one dev presenting learning each week.
Also code reviews are great opportunities for knowledge sharing.
Akash, I think if they don't want to learn anything new, sooner or later you'll have to replace them with someone who is more competent and with more skills.
Only if reviewer is smart, otherwise all code is great!!
Yes that’s correct.
A thousand times this!
Knowing what you don't need to know.
You hear a word or concept, it's hard to know if it's okay that you don't know the thing.
Humility.
Once you arrived a certain grade of knowledge, is very easy to think that you know "a lot" and you can't be wrong.
I've worked with people that is never wrong, if there's an error is because somebody touched their code and that their algorithm is perfect and covers all the cases...
I think their is also humidity needed when you know you don't know everything and pros and cons exist for everything. Being surrounded by those requesting less then optimal use of time or seeking 'the' pattern still requires te right level of humble response.
I’ve met a whole bunch of people who are insanely arrogant about what they know, and if you don’t know as much (less experience) then they hold it over others. Insanely counterproductive, and never leads to helping people develop. I’ve found this in the likes of Java/.net, but much less in JS stacks or anything open source.
The concept of scale is hard with programming. How big is big?
A database with 100 million records may be nothing in terms of scale, but a loop of 100 things could make a web request timeout if the loop is inefficient.
For me, it's just hard to get started period. I've got a ras pi that's been collecting dust in my closet for ummm 2 years now... wow, embarrassing.
Anyway, it feels like there's so many different possible ways to go and mountains of beginner tutorials available. I just need to get disciplined and dive in.
I totally can relate to wanting to chill or even just wind down after a 9-5. Lots of other things come calling: gym, cooking, music, time with my significant other... and of course, the cats! I know if I just stop making excuses, set aside time each night, and get in a rhythm, it'll pay off.
Gotta overcome that procrastination! 😅
I totally empathize with this. Finding the motivation to start is hard.
The number of in progress projects is impressive. But I don't think that is unique to programming hobbies.
Your not alone cause I have the problem of doing my side projects while finding time in writing my blog. I think scheduling time can help slightly to get started.
I could not agree more! I ride horses competitively and often when I am not working, I am riding so it's hard to squeeze in time for side projects, blogs, etc. I always feel behind when my other coworkers talk about the latest new language that I have never heard of. Recently though, I am starting to realize it is OK to not know about every new thing. There is no possible way anyone could!
I totally feel you! I try to juggle learning German, reading, cooking, cleaning, and managing a thousand side projects :) I need to plan my life better!
Learning that "someone else's bad (or even terrible) code" isn't always so because someone was lazy or didn't care enough. There could many reasons why it's so, terrible and daily changing requirements, very tight deadlines, constant pressure, sheer amount of other work that has to be done.
Also, finishing side projects, heck. Even starting them.
The hardest thing I've experienced on my coding journey is managing time spent coding, staying up to date with what is happening tech, and finding a tech job. I also have been struggling with impostor syndrome and people trying to pressure me to quit coding. I often had to rely on the tech communities I participate in even more this year due to all the negativity I have been receiving.
Don't ever quit! I was horrible for the first few years in dev... I had no idea the community existed. Keep going!
No worries! I'm not planning on quitting anytime soon. It has just been harder dealing with the negative people telling me to give up coding and how coding is not going to help me get a job this year. Thankfully the coding communities have been awesome and have been the best support system throughout my coding journey. I'll definitely keep using them as I keep coding.
Oof, definitely agree with that. I've been at my first programming job for a year and a half now, and while I have ideas for side projects that I'm genuinely interested in, I find it really hard to build up the energy/motivation to start them. I'm usually spent by the time I get home, and almost always want to do other things.
I think what you're saying is hardest thing for me, too, but a close second for me is figuring out when a solution is good enough. Often times I'll write a solution and then rewrite it over and over again, until it becomes overengineered. Then I'll rewrite it again, and push a final solution that's simpler and probably works well enough. Knowing that someone is going to review your code helps with this, but I constantly need to remind myself of "Perfect is the enemy of good."
Totally agree! Usually I find that by watching other people code (i.e. tutorials) I gain motivation!
So far I think one of mine is knowing when to be okay with messy, "bad" code. Ideally the answer would be never, but I'm having to learn on the job that often resources are limited and you have to make compromises. The part I struggle with the most is knowing where to make those compromises to limit the severity with which you get stung later when you have to revisit the code.