Some of the best programming (or life, in fact) advice I’ve received
“Your problem is not at all what you can and can’t do, but rather your expectation that things should come easy to you.”
Gregory Brown earned his spot in the Ruby Heroes roster more than a year ago, but he’s earned a central spot in my personal constellation of heroes (and friends, if I can be so bold as to claim him).
It’s been about a month since he wrote this to me, after I came into the IRC chat room, feeling like a complete fraud and failure as a programmer. Tonight, I’m rolling that sentence around in my head, and it cuts so deeply to the heart of one of my most cherished beliefs: that I am a smart, talented person who catches on to things quickly.
“You think things should be easy for a ‘real programmer’, and get frustrated when they’re hard for you.”
This belief in my inborn intelligence/talent backfires hard (and there’s a lot of science to back this up) when it comes into conflict with personal experience. When I face a problem I can’t solve alone, I’m stuck. Either I’m an idiot or the problem is so hard as to be unsolvable.
“So you work extra hard, thinking that will help you catch up.”
Historically, I’ve let my ego tell me the problem is unsolvable and I’d give up. Over the last year or two, I’ve discovered that I can throw extra effort at a problem, work day and night, and get some of the same results that more experienced people get in half the time.
But this is a hack! It’s unsustainable, and only temporarily props up my belief that I can accomplish these “out of my league” problems alone. Sooner or later, I’ve vacuumed the joy out of the problem-solving process and learn to fear and avoid it altogether. I believe this may be one of the primary sources of that complex state we call “burnout”.
“Just get the help you need from those who will spend time teaching you.”
This is the ultimate ego smasher: asking for directions. It’s so simple, so why don’t we do it more often? If you’re a programmer, you almost certainly know programmers smarter than you who know the lay of the land and would be happy to help.
Men famously hate asking for help, while most women I know find the “I must persevere alone” mentality ridiculous. This point of gender differentiation is one of the reasons I think it’s an absolute crime that we don’t have more women in programming.
“Most ‘easy’ programming things are only easy because you’ve done them 100 times and learned them years ago, not because they were easy to learn.”
Ultimately, patience with yourself is at least as much a virtue as other forms of patience. It may perhaps be the sigle most important kind. Dave Hoover, in his excellent Apprenticeship Patterns book, really tries to get you to reframe, moving the camera back so that you can take a view of your skills in terms of decades, not weeks or even years.
Lastly, it’s important to find that person or group you can turn to in the moments you feel stuck and inept. I am fortunate to have an awesome support structure through friends I’ve met in the Utah Ruby Users Group and Ruby Mendicant University.
Thanks Greg, for the advice and for giving me a place to go when I feel stuck. If you can be as patient with yourself as Greg has been with me, you’re going to turn out just fine.
