I am going to let you in on a little secret... The best developers are the ones that fail the most.
While this sounds counterintuitive, because people often assume the best developers never fail; I assure you failure is the one of the best teachers in the software engineering industry.
As a developer your job is to solve new and interesting solutions to problems that haven't been solved. When a company assigns you a ticket to complete some task to solve a specific problem, one should anticipate failure multiple times. The company doesn't know exactly how to build it, and you the programmer won't know exactly how to build it.
When I create a new react component and there is not a single error message in my terminal I generally assume I did something wrong. The point of sharing this is that everyone makes many mistakes a day when writing code, and to not make some sort of mistake within newly written code is a rarity. We are humans and its very easy to make wrong assumptions about the data we are manipulating.
My message to any new developers: Do not be scared of failure. When you see an error message break it down to its smallest pieces and use the knowledge you already possess to find a solution. If something peculiar is going on then use your resources, google, stack overflow, or friends to figure out what is going. The only real failure is when you give up completely and FAIL YOURSELF.
In any process of building a technology there are millions of possible solutions. The job for you the developer is to find the solution that is most efficient and right to you...and not to break production. But that is a whole other topic.
My suggestion to new developers who struggle and lose confidence when they receive errors is to get a rubber duck to talk to about your errors. This might sound foolish but tell the duck what you are anticipating should happen, why your code should be working, and why the error should not be happening. During this process you will often figure out what really is going wrong with your code. With this methodology as well as consistent testing solving any problem seems surmountable.
Remember, if developing wasn't stressful and difficult then there would not be a surplus need for developers! Failure is a daily occurrence in our lives and is completely normal. Do not be discouraged and allow errors to help you not only build your developing skills, but your grit and persistence as well.
We are taught in school that failure is the worst thing that can occur to us; however, in development failure in just a stepping stone towards the path of success.
I hope you enjoyed this motivational post and if you are new to this industry you take away the key message I am trying to present.
Have a great New Year, and keep on coding.
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