Ok, so you might have to take the title on this post with ease so to speak... But in some aspects it's not just a funny title on a blog post, it is actually also true to some extend.
Some of you already know a little bit about my programming journey and some may not. So here's a little recap! And yes, this is going to be quite a long story.
I started studying to become a Java developer when I was in my 30's. To be honest I don't know why I wanted to become a developer it just kinda happened. The first few months of my education was a walk in the park! It was easy and I felt in full control and I delivered on a high level. But as the courses progressed the pace quickly became extremely fast and it went from being super easy to kinda difficult...
Everything I find interesting I'm usually very good at. And things I find not so interesting I am absolutely terrible at! And I'm kinda used to having an easy time and learning quickly. Programming was the first thing I've encountered that wasn't easy and that I couldn't just learn quick and easy and get it out of the way.
What I also need to add to this story is that I had no patience at all (I still struggle sometimes 😅). And yes, you might think "yeah haha same here!" but seriously I had real issues with patience and anger management. If you read this and you know me, you know...
So mixing a very bad patience and anger management with a huge fear of failure was not a good place to try to learn new things. It was just the opposite, a very very bad and dark place to try to learn and adapt to new things. And just like that Imposter Syndrome said hi! and started to follow me around. Everywhere, constantly breathing down my neck reminding me that I'm a failure and that there is no way I can do this. Believe me when I say fear of programming is real.
Anyway I could make this story very much longer than it already is but I'm not going to do that. At least not today.
So how did I break that endless dark cycle of fear and anxiety?
I realised I had two choices: give up and do something else or just k e e p g o i n g.
So I kept going. And instead of focusing so much on learning the techniques and "figure everything out" I started thinking about how I could improve both my mental state and how I could improve my information processing. And I am a logical thinker by nature, and you know what? It's just no logical to process that much information and learn everything in detail during a short education where one course is just a few weeks. It's just not realistic if you have no prior knowledge.
I can still remember when I decided that what I was doing was not helping me at all and if I would have any chance at all to succeed I needed to change what I was doing. So I kinda figured the best thing I could do was to try to learn as much as I could from what my mind was capable of processing at the time. And that's when I learned, and practiced, breaking problems and tasks into really small pieces and solving them step by step one piece at a time. The same way as we write blocks of code.
And yes, I've cried, screamed, woke up in the middle of the night cause I thought I had a solution to a programming problem, I've ran soaking wet straight out from the shower cause I suddenly had an "idea" and I've stayed up until 5 countless of mornings just trying to solve problems. But i kept going.
To be honest I did not even realise that I suddenly had quite a lot of patience and that instead of being super frustrated when I encountered a problem I found myself intrigued by it. It was actually my best friend that brought this to my attention. He is also a developer and we collaborated on a project with one of my clients. The first time we actually sat right next to each other and programmed he gave me this look like he had seen a ghost. And yes, at the time we had some huge problems with our code! And he said to me:
"I've known you most part of my life but the person next to me is not Helena. Helena would have thrown out the computer, the desk and just completely wrecked the whole place by now. What the hell happened?".
And that's when I realised that what I got from programming was so much more than just the actual knowledge. I've practiced having more patience, being calm when finding myself under pressure and just keep on going instead of giving up. And of course I learned a ton for every god damn error that I solved. But the most important part: there is always a solution to every problem, you just need to find it.
So in some way programming gave me some inner peace. Or rather, it made me confront my own issues and actually solving them instead of just ignoring it. I might have done that without programming being a part of my journey but to be honest I doubt it. Taking the easy way kinda worked for me before 🙃
But I need to add one more thing to this long story. The hours you invest in just typing code will affect your learning curve greatly. You need to invest time to code or your journey is going to be a bumpy ride. But if you invest time, focus on yourself and your own learning and just keep on going you will eventually succeed.
And remember, a developer is not a rocket scientist or a rock star - we are just workers like everyone else.
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