This is about programming specifically, but I guess you can experience similar things with many other activities as well. So if you can even remotely relate your thoughts are very welcome.
Alright so, every time when I sit down to programme it tends to start out great, I feel relaxed and kind of looking forward to it. However, at some point there is going to be a bug in the code or some library does not work as I expect it to. I then start googling; try something out; doesn’t work; google some more; try more stuff; still doesn’t work. While this is of course just what coding is like, during these “google, test, repeat” sessions I tend to go faster with every iteration and at some point I am in such a rush that it feels like I hardly remember to breathe. Needless to say that this is freaking exhausting. After an hour of this my brain is just mush.
Of course, the obvious solution to this is to just take a break as soon as I notice me speeding up. I will try to do this more, but sometimes it feels like I can’t. This unsolved bug will sit in my mind so that I can’t stop thinking about it even if I’m not at the keyboard. “It must be solved. Now”. Of course it doesn’t, but that’s what my mind is telling me.
In a few months I will probably be working as a full time dev again and until then I have to have solved this problem somehow if I want to do this any longer than a couple of years.
Ideally I want programming to be a meditative experience and feel refreshed afterwards instead of completely drained. This might be illusionary, but at least I would want it to be draining more like I’ve been on a good run, instead of feeling like being hit by a truck.
Anyways I’m wondering if any of you can relate to this and maybe has solved this in some way. Does this ever happen to you? What do you do to prevent this from happening? I appreciate any thoughts you have on this.
I’m not a programmer but I’ve done QA professionally so I’m kind of on the other side where my main focus has been in finding the bugs
Maybe I’m focusing in a little too much on the particulars of your description of googling, trying something, googling more, trying something else? But it kind of sounds to me like you could benefit from digging into the issue more methodically.
Usually when something doesn’t work as expected, it means one of our assumptions is wrong. So other than documentation I would say resist the urge to go to Google at first. Walk yourself through the relevant code and methodically figure out what assumptions you’re making about it. And then cross-check with the documentation to see whether there are any special cases where those assumptions are wrong, or maybe you just subtly misunderstand something and don’t know about it yet. I would guess that if you primarily work in only one or two languages, that doing this will help strengthen your fundamentals in that language.
Hope this helps
Well, yeah it sometimes does happen even if I’m not googling, but it’s nowhere near as exhausting. But I feel like forcing myself to stick to methodically approaches still great advice.