We die there…

For me, learning programming was similar to moving to a new country and attempting to understand its culture, values, language, and everything else there is to know about it.

It’s overwhelming at first, with the thought of you feeling like you’ll never understand their way of life, constantly questioning whether they’ll accept you, then when you finally feel like you’ve got the gist of what’s going on, the indigenes (those annoying bugs) spit out your errors in your face and you’re like, oh shit, here we go again.

I’ll never forget how I felt when I ran my first ‘Hello World’ code (I wonder why they are always greeting the world at first). It was a million-dollar feeling at the time, and I’m sure my uncle (you know who I’m talking about) didn’t feel the same way when he launched his company (you know the company). I could beat my chest and reaffirm that I was already a full-time programmer, or so I thought until those indigenes came for me again.

Then there was the feeling of wanting to learn everything but discovering at the end of the day that you had actually learned nothing, the feeling of learning XYZ today only to discover that you were just copying someone else’s code and you have no idea how or why the code was written, all you care about is that it was solving your basic needs at the time.

Questions start to arise, such as, “What are you doing here?” “Are you certain you’re good enough?” ”Look where you are, look where your friends are…” My mind began to accept the imposter syndrome until I remembered my billion-dollar feeling, at which point my mind was like…

We die there!!!