What on earth am I talking about?
Programming for me and many others have turned from a small hobby into a career. But like all jobs there is barriers that can prevent you from doing your role. I don't believe there is a proper technical term for this but I like to call it coders block (like writers block).
Personal experience
Currently my primary language is Java before that I came from a background of C++. I commonly found when learning Java that I had no clue what I was doing, I commonly felt jealous around my friends because they were making all this really cool stuff in Java and I'm sat here like a potato thinking what on earth am I doing? I will never get to where I want to be.
Although this happened I didn't let it bring me down. I personally see programming as more than a job as a learning experience there is always something in every language that can be learnt, a new way to do things, a new API/Library to assist in your every day tasks. And I kept this in the back of my mind that to get to where I want to be I can't give up on myself and have to keep pushing forward.
One thing that kept pushing me forward was my friends. As I currently volunteer at a large network I have staff managers and work alongside some of the employees that make the network what it is. Two of these people specifically (wont mention names due to privacy) have given me the motivation that I've been looking for to get to where I am now.
What common barriers are there and how I got through them.
Like mentioned above I see this similar to writers block where a author is writing a book and they're just stuck for whatever reason.
Motivation
Motivation is what we need in our lives to get through pretty much any kind of work or task. Without it we're basically screwed. Personally I struggled with finding the motivation to program anything for a long time. Above is where I found the motivation to get to where I am now. But without motivation you will commonly start think what the fuck is all this? Why am I doing this? Whats the point? Oh sod it.
Overcoming this I found reminding myself constantly reminding myself of the reason of why I became a programmer in the first place. I came from doing this as a hobby just messing around in C++ seeing how much goofy stuff I could do. But it occurred to me one day that I could make a career out of this. I have 3 brothers all of which are somewhat involved in technology one of my brothers is a programmer for a large company. He loves his job I just put two and two together the fact that I love programming and I could do this as a job.
But maybe you're doing it for another reason. Many people I know do it for the fact its fun, others do it because its in their veins. Reminding yourself why you're in this place you're at now and all the effort you put into learning to get to where you are now will help
Jealously
Now I'll straight up admit this and say there is people that I'm friends with or work with that I'm jealous of. Why? Because I've seen these people create some really damn cool things and It's just made me think that I would never get to be good as they are. But I was wrong, oh boy I was wrong.
For me to overcome this I spent countless hours researching things they had did and ideas in my mind to teach myself how to do them. I knew that programming would take time to learn but I never knew that in a language such as Java there is endless possibilities. Some of the ideas I had in my mind I wasn't sure if they were possible because I hadn't done my research. Through this research it taught me a lot, it taught more efficient ways of writing code and more efficient methods.
Another thing to remember is that there will always be people that have more skills, or make more awesome things, or have a better knowledge base than you. But does that make you a bad programmer? No. What makes a person a great programmer is someone who is dedicated, eager to learn, and loves doing what they do. I was originally afraid to ask for help with my code because I thought I would be judged on how I did things. But the people they asked (okay they laughed a little bit) but in the end the advice they gave me helped more than I could ever imagine.
Bugs
No doubt about it, bugs are one of or probably the most annoying thing about any form of code written. They become a bigger pain in the ass than some hosting companies. Sometimes I get stuck with a bug for hours upon end that just make me sit here thinking "god dammit why wont you work?!?!?!?!".
Normally when there's a bug I can't fix I'll take myself away from the computer and do something else to rest my brain. Taking a walk in the woods sometimes with music I have found to be really relaxing. When I come back and look at the code again for me its commonly something misspelled, using curly braces instead of semicolons or the code just doesn't work in general because its done wrong (╯°□°）╯︵ â”»â”â”»
Got any stories or comments on this sort topic? I'd love to hear them
Latest comments (3)
Hi George.
Hey Erik
There will always be those super advanced software developers that could code circles around you in any capacity. They are probably real, but it's not really important.
Consistent improvement will eventually make you a really damn good coder, who can be payed lots of 💰💰💰 and create really cool things. It's basically an inevitability of persistence. And when you do become amazing, there will always be those more amazing to you, but it fundamentally does not matter. If you stay excited and interested in the industry, you'll be able to do amazing things in the future you have no concept of achieving now. That's pretty cool.