Programming is a challenge for the mind. Not only because of the complexity of systems or features we are building, but also because of the setup. Most people program alone and that not always by choice. Many teams I have seen split up problems into smaller tasks that get implemented by one person each. The idea seems nice. We have a lot of work and by the divide and conquer approach we work faster towards the common goal.
The drawback of this setup is, that this follows a lot of alone time with focus on getting thoughts into code. With code comes bugs and with more bugs and more code comes more and more frustration. And frustration was never known to be a constructive driver for qualitative programming but rather nourishes self-doubt. Like a tiny voice telling us that we are an imposter, that we are not as smart as our peers and should have become travel bloggers instead of a developers.
Heads up, many of us have been there too. And will end up there again.
But what to do? How do we stay on the problem anyway, find the cause of bugs or continue coding until everything work as we want it and not just throw the towel into the ring?
Recently I stumbled over Angela Duckworth’s TED talk about GRIT. She studies the reason that makes people successful and why. Are there common patterns that apply to those people? What do they do differently than others?
She found out that there is a relation of talent, effort and skill. With an initial talent we need less effort to learn a certain skill, but if we put a lot of effort into learning, talent can be outperformed. The motivation to go the extra mile and put effort into improvement she describes as grit, the combination of passion and perseverance, the will to push forward to become better.
Isn't that great news?
I found her description of grit inspiring, because it destroys the finality of learning and its dependency
on talent. The brain is plastic. It has the ability to adapt and change. So, if you have a vision of your
goal and spend the energy to progress and improve you will go further and further and improve your skill.
Programming is a skill like any other. With enough time and a curious mind, you will master it and fix the bugs.
Keep that in mind when frustration is building up again and you feel like giving up. It's yet another step on the way to the solution and you will learn a lot from this experience.
Check out Angela Duckworth's TED Talk or the conversation on EconTalks with Ross Roberts.
All the best,
Christine