Am I good enough

As some who is trying to figure out if code and frontend is the way I want to go, it’s hard if you’re constantly thinking if you’re good or not. This line of work, especially working with school assignments, it’s hard to see progress. The feedback you are getting are somehow not enough. This short article is for me to show my struggles in the world of code. I wanted share my experience and how my mind was set. I came across some struggles but I also want to share how I dealt with it. I want to let people know, that we all share the same struggles and instead of pushing it away, try to embrace it.

Decision

Communication Multimedia Design (CMD) is as broad as it gets. I did like working with computers and designing things, but I actually never thought about web-design or whatsoever. So I took this path because, I saw what you could do and saw a lot of web designs I liked. But also this was not easy, because there was the developer path, which gives you less designing but more developing. I was unsure at first, because I just couldn’t get the hand of it. Doing development was a slow process, with a lot of errors. But being stubborn and not asking made it more difficult to understand what’s happening.

Why didn’t I just ask questions?

Dudes overload.

Well, there were more dudes in class than girls. This was overwhelming for me. I didn’t ask questions because I let the boys talk to each other. The one in front of the class was also a dude, so they talked and I just didn’t dare to come between them. It just felt like I’m intruding their conversation about codes and problem and I didn’t understand one bit.

Experience gap

There was such a big gap between beginners and intermediate. Even though the classes where at beginners level, it’s still hard to follow when you don’t know the terms. So you end up dwelling over information you need to look up later on. So if there is time to ask for a question, what would your question be? I had no questions to ask because I just didn’t know what to ask. As confusing it sound, I was also confused it the class. They always say, if you don’t follow it anymore, just ask. Nobody did. Why didn’t we just ask things? We let the teacher just explain a load of information with a little bit of live coding and then what? They just want you to understand some basics but they don’t get a lot of feedback from the class. Sometime I feel bad if a class is quite, because as a teacher, you just don’t know if your students are learning or understanding any of what you just said. Both side don’t benefit because, students are not asking or don’t want to ask.

I want to solve it!

This will always hunt me, if you know this feeling, you know what I’m talking about. It was my decisions to learn code, so I need to figure it out and understand it myself. I can spend hours and hours without any progress, because I think I can do it myself. Eventually after getting myself tired, I try it again the next day. This is not a bad habit. I really like this about myself, so if I ever solve something well.. Best.. Feeling.. Ever...

But why code?

Do what you are good at, they say. But now it feels like I’m doing where I’m worst at. Code. Why am I staying in this path pushing my way through? To be honest, I wanted to learn in and that’s all. I didn’t ever really gave it a though what I wanted to become later on. I just wanted to learn it. It motivated me enough to keep choosing this track even when it keeps punching me in the face.

Conclusion

This will probably be cliché but, don’t always criticize the work and effort you put in coding. Instead be happy with the accomplishments even the tiniest bit is more helpful than always want to be better. It may feel like you’re not improving at all, but with coding the process tend to be invisible. It’s all in your mind and the thought to always want to remember every bits of coding. No, you don’t remember coding, you learn to grow with it. Over some time you get more handy with searching, or even understanding where the problem might be. That is what it’s all about. You don’t need to remember things, just figure out the problem and what you want to do with it. Reading a lot of Stackoverflow codes can help make a difference, but don’t just copy-paste the line. Read it first and try to understand what is happening in this line. If you copy-paste like I did for a long time, you will end up with problems you can’t solve immediately. If you don’t know the code, you’ll probably end up stuck at some point. Being stuck is the most time consuming ever and It’s mostly something stupid. Start with the basic, keep it to YOUR level and don’t follow the nerd herd. Keep it at your own pace and ask question, how stupid they sound, someone else has been stuck at the same and they are more happy to explain what they did wrong and what you should do. Because this way they are also learning and trying to understand what they just did. Practice a lot and be bold.