M2M Day 188: Why’d I sign up for this?! (The Coding Pit of Despair)
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For May, my goal is to build the software part of a self-driving car.
Sometimes, I think building software is the cruelest form of punishment. Today was one of those days.
Unlike other pursuits, where, even when things are tough, I can make slow steady progress (or at least learn something valuable from my failures), trying to get my computer to successfully run a few lines of code is like banging my head against the wall, hoping that, if I do it for long enough, something will eventually change.
When venturing into new coding territory, here is the common plot arc: 1. Spend two hours trying every possible permutation of code / environment setup to see if some random combination will work, 2. Nothing works and you realize that you’re further away from your goal than when you started (because you messed around with so much stuff), 3. Keep trying for another hour, 4. Magically, the stars align and some inexplicable combination of things makes everything work.
The problem with this model is that… you need to grit your teeth and suffer through the pain for an unknown amount of time until you magically reach nirvana on Step 4. You don’t know when nirvana is coming nor do you believe that it will ever come, but you have to keep going on the off-chance that it might. There is no gradual pay-off, just soul-sucking frustration until it magically works.
And then, when it works, nothing is more blissful. All the pain is worth it for this one moment, assuming this one moment comes.
Today, I was barely hanging on.
I’m deep into an area I have little grounding in, and as a result, I felt lost and helpless for much of the day.
In these cases, it’s often useful to rely on video tutorials or online courses, but I haven’t found an accessible tutorial (or any tutorial) yet that would help ground me.
So instead, I spent around 2.5 hours today drowning in the Coding Pit of Despair. It was brutal and confidence-threatening, and I wanted to admit defeat many times today, but I was able to hold on.
Somehow, I found my way towards the end of the day, and it seems I’ve made tangible progress. I can’t say for sure though until tomorrow morning: My computer is currently working away, and will probably keep working through the night.
Tomorrow, I hope I wake up to a successfully run program.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
