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Rammina
Rammina

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What are the things that scare you as a Developer? 🎃

Happy Halloween, everyone!

I think the question fits the theme, so I'd like to ask everyone:

What are your fears as a developer?

Here are the things I'm scared of (reasonable or not aside):

  • not being able to find my next freelance client.
  • production bugs.
  • performance anxiety when showing interviewers and clients my work output.
  • Imposter Syndrome (fear of being a fake or being too dumb)
  • that my Imposter Syndrome isn't even real, and that I actually suck.

  • running into a bug that has no StackOverflow, Github issues, and/or online solutions (which means I need to figure it out on my own).

  • posting a question online (especially on SO) where others might judge me.

  • the feeling of I'm not improving enough (lack of visible progress).

Almost forgot to add:

  • not understanding what I'm reading

I'd like to know what you all are afraid of as fellow developers!


Note: I'm learning a lot from what everyone's sharing. Thank you, everyone!

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Oldest comments (69)

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pikot101 profile image
Pikot101

most of what you said and...

micromanagement, jerk coach/pm, doing all the work in team, bad company..

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rammina profile image
Rammina

I mean no offense, but it seems like you've went through tough times. Those are also the reasons why I don't want to work for a corporate environment.

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okrohan profile image
Rohan Salunke

Bad leadership is the worst, I've worked with some of the best managers and the worst. The worst would do things like micromanagement, placing themselves as unnecessary dependency, trying to portray my desings as theirs, the list goes on and on :|
Software still is mostly about people. Bad People = Bad Software.

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rammina profile image
Rammina

Yup, management that gets in the way of the development process is just the worst.

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j_ma profile image
j

imposter syndrome is also a big one for me. i'm also terrified that low code development will get so advanced that the need for developers is going to significantly decrease

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rammina profile image
Rammina

I think there will always be a need for developers, that's just my opinion.

People with high self-awareness and low self-esteem will most likely have Imposter Syndrome. Also because the field of programming requires a lot of self studying, it's a lot harder to get validation about your skills.

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vonheikemen profile image
Heiker

I'm scared of one particular situation. It goes a little bit like...

Project manager: Hey. Do you remember that api you did for that presentation a few days?

Me: yeah... that thing that is totally still under development.

Project manager: That one. It's in production now. We need you to fix it.

Me: I'm sorry-- what now?

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rammina profile image
Rammina

Yikes, who would push code that is still not tested and hasn't gone through quality assurance to production?

Then again looks at many companies

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doehl profile image
Mathias Døhl

Nothing is more scary then manually running a delete statement on a production database. 😳

Everyone, got that one story...

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rammina profile image
Rammina

I think that is one common fear among many developers haha!

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ryencode profile image
Ryan Brown

I resemble that remark... (shame of junior dev)

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baenencalin profile image
Calin Baenen

manually running a delete statement

What? Like this? delete databasePtr;?

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williamlawrence profile image
Will Lawrence

Not an issue with every application, but I am terrified of revealing client PHI/PII.

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rammina profile image
Rammina

As a freelancer, I'm also scared of this because of the legal consequences. I try my best to use cloud-based solutions for security of data to avoid the responsibility of doing it myself.

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williamlawrence profile image
Will Lawrence

Oh for sure. I do the same thing. Delegate the scary stuff to my betters.

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souksyp profile image
Souk Syp.

Debts

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rammina profile image
Rammina

There is also self learning? You can do it without going to university/college or boot camps. It's a lot harder, but it's definitely possible!

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souksyp profile image
Souk Syp.

A self-taught guy has to pay rent and foods too. 😭

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rammina profile image
Rammina

Ya but it's a lot lower cost than going to college

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sa_webmastery profile image
Sasha Akhavi

Nothing's quite as scary as bugs that seem to have fixed themselves without any human intervention.
Except maybe the idea that I / we might do something with our tech that ends up hurting people. :(
Oh, and user tests are terrifying every. single. time.

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rammina profile image
Rammina

Ah, I have encountered this multiple times and it is definitely scary when the code you're writing is for other people.

I didn't mind it as much when I was just doing personal projects.

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baenencalin profile image
Calin Baenen

Nothing's quite as scary as bugs that seem to have fixed themselves without any human intervention.

Logs. This is why you always keep plenty of debug info handy.
It really pays off to record the conditions of the program in-case a bug occurs.

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rammina profile image
Rammina

Yeah I make sure to keep printing the stack trace all of the time especially when I'm still in the development process.

Debugger is also great!

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bradtaniguchi profile image
Brad

Production bugs that result in data not being saved.

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rammina profile image
Rammina

Similar to production bugs where data gets changed unintentionally and/or deleted!

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thumbone profile image
Bernd Wechner
  1. Sinking deeper and and deeper into a given problem asking all the while if there is in fact light at the end of the tunnel, egged on by solid estimation in the first instance, then hope then the sunk costs so far, and ever fearful that it may be ... a dead end.

  2. Frustratingly poorly documented libraries that you pretty much, or totally have to reverse engineer while trying to utilise them

  3. Spending a long time developing something only to find someone else did it better and faster and you can toss the fruits of your labor out the window and just use that.

  4. Dealing with irascible hubris and poor interaction skills in other developers, not least gate keepers on repos or fora.

  5. Forking frigging forking ... umpteen wasted effort solutions solving the same problem, meaning when you want that problem solved, you don't have two or three options (which would rock) but like 20 or 30 and your first job is endless pros/cons research before committing to a path.

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rammina profile image
Rammina

I see! I've dealt with number 2 and 3 quite a few times before. 4 seems like it's very common in the corporate world.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

3. happened to me not too long ago; then I did a benchmark and my code was x10 more performant sooo... not a complete waste of time, at least :D

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clavinjune profile image
Clavin June

What are your fears as a developer? changes.

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rammina profile image
Rammina

The constant updating of technologies? The fact that you always have to learn for the rest of your career?

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clavinjune profile image
Clavin June

The requirement changes after all old requirements are already implemented xD

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rammina profile image
Rammina

Ya, but that's just the nature of software development no?

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rammina profile image
Rammina

There are open source technologies (and projects) around though, other fields have more centralized knowledge than development.

Like, anyone could learn programming if they just look around for the right resources and people.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️ • Edited

Developers/teams who choose technologies purely on whether they're popular, with no regard to the appropriateness to their project

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rammina profile image
Rammina

Typescript cough cough

I stopped arguing with those people, and I just link them to this article.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️

React also

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rammina profile image
Rammina

React?
As someone who really loves React, I got hit pretty hard by that! Haha. When would React be inappropriate for a project (assuming its still FE web development)?

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️ • Edited

Many, many places. Maybe not just React, but frameworks in general. I've lost count of the number of REALLY simple websites (Portfolio websites with next to zero interactivity, holding pages for upcoming projects, single page form websites, etc. - the list is long) that, for some bizarre reason, have been built using a framework. It literally makes no sense

(I personally loathe React, that's probably why I singled it out initially. I work with it on daily basis though, unfortunately 😞)

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rammina profile image
Rammina

Oh, yeah! Vanilla Javascript/HTML/CSS would perform better than React for simple noninteractive webpages. It also has better SEO.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️

Vanilla JS would perform better than React for ALL websites. Frameworks become handy when the complexity of the site means that development using raw JS would start becoming a nightmare... in these cases, a framework would likely be easier to manage. It's a trade-off

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zippcodder profile image
Deon Rich

honestly very relatable lol

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saptakbhoumik profile image
SaptakBhoumik

1) Core dump segment fault lol
2) Index out of range
3) Explaining someone what i am doing

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saptakbhoumik profile image
SaptakBhoumik

1) Core dump segment fault lol
2) Index out of range
3) Explaining someone what i am doing