I'm not smart, I just sat on it longer than you

If someone is “struggling” with programming or just learning something complicated, this post may give him some kind of hope.

I studied computer science and can program in several languages, so why when people tell me that I’m a cool developer, I have a feeling that they are wrong? I usually answer something like:

“I’m not cool, I’m just sitting there a little longer ... you can do the same.”
')

It's funny that those who tell me that I'm good are usually not developers. It reminds me of Julie Jo's story “The Pretender's Syndrome” , which, in fact, echoes me. She writes about the time when she studied programming, and everyone in her class was discussing how long their homework took. Most spoke a few hours maximum, and then Julie wrote how long it took her:

“Twenty hours. That's how long it took me. I am not strong in this. Am I really one of you? ”

It was exactly as it was with me. I am surprisingly bad in mathematics, and programming was never easy for me, compared to fellow students — I worked all year without a hint of personal life and was tormented even by writing Hello World and system.out.println () (very basic things in Java), not to mention the additional tasks. I thought that I did away with math in high school and that programming is drawing figures on the screen (and not typing in a black and white terminal!)

There were many times when I felt that this was not for me, but I needed to learn, because I loved all these amazing things that programming embodies - from building my personal projects and games to experimenting with various effects and animations.

In fact, recalling my first job as a programmer, I will always remember how a lead developer told me how much I differed from ordinary developers. He said it was good that I didn’t care about the code, like most other programmers, that it was something that I couldn’t understand until the end. I had no doubts about my code, they told me, I literally did not worry about anything. It was then that I realized that the backend was not for me and quit this job for the sake of freelancing and my own projects, in which there was my passion.

The code was just an intermediary with which I could create great things that could not be called the actual quality of my code. I don’t say that it doesn’t matter, but I couldn’t take care of indents, using camel notations or project structure, as long as it all allowed me to do something interactive that could attract end users.

In addition, over time, you still notice how to structure the code, but, honestly, this is not such a necessity that I would worry about. The same applies to frameworks, no matter what it is react, angular, backbone, polymer or something else. You do not need to learn them all, just be aware of them, and choose the one that suits your needs.

Although I studied computer science, I still find that hard work alone is not enough - eventually you hit the ceiling where logic and mathematics will limit you technically as an engineer, but at least not creatively.

A similar principle may perhaps be applied to other disciplines. Having education in something can mean that you are capable of doing something, but it does not always mean that you are the best in what you are doing, and vice versa. Understanding this can discourage people from doing when it comes to programming, but I would say that anyone can code at a fairly good level if there is a real desire to learn, and there are reasons and motivation to do it.

The ability to come up with an idea, design and sketch a sketch, then to translate it into a real product are the reason for me to learn.