The obstacle of comparison
I finished a bachelor’s degree in Information Systems they year I turned 40. 2 months later I started my first job in the IT-world, as a developer for a small company which focus on web-applications using Django and Python. The first year with programming has been a rollercoaster ride with despair and frustration, euphoria and enlightenment.
I am certain most people, regardless of age, have challenges when learning a new profession. However, there might be some other challenges when a 40-year old person starts as a programmer compared to the most common challenges younger people meets. For me one major obstacle has been comparison with senior developers and software engineers. I am not being fair to myself when I think my work, as a junior developer, should be as advanced as a senior developer or a software engineer. And this comparison drags you down.
My solution to overcome this obstacle of comparison consists of two parts: 1) build my simple code as good as I possible can. I look at the naming of variables, classes, methods and function. Does my methods and functions do one thing? Can you read my code and understand it without comments? And I write tests. Lots of tests. When I do this I can be proud of what I have built, regardless of complexity and features. 2) Accept that not everyone will become a software engineer or some sort of developer ninja. I can be an average developer which do not build the most complex software, but the software I build is good craftsmanship.
