Today I read a post from a reddit user, who was in a depressed mood I guess, because he has been trying to do a midterm project, but he couldn’t finish it, and, even though he had been trying, he wasn’t able to achieve it. He had almost completed it, but because a method was unreachable, the game that he intended to do was not ready yet. He tried to contact with teaching assistants from his university, but they didn’t even try to help him and, because he is busy working, he cannot go to his professor’s office hours. Because most of his class mates have been accomplishing this assignment without a problem, he started to think that he is not meant to be a programmer.
Well, that’s not a very well-thought conclusion. If that’s the case, if you are really good at doing your assignments, that doesn’t mean you are really good at programming, or any other course, so you are not good at anything. But that’s not true. Even if you spend your whole life trying to master something, there may be times when you are stuck in something that you may have thought that you knew before. He may have learned much more than his class mates for those extra hours spent trying to figure out the solution.
And, of course, he was able to get some help from the community in that sub-reddit, and some users even tried to tell him that he should not worry, because even if you are an advanced programmer, you may face much more difficulties in more complicated projects.
And I would like to motivate that user and all you out there that, even the most successful people, our hero models, have been facing difficulties, but they didn’t give up and that’s why are famous now. Isn’t it true that water cuts through rock, not because of its strength, but because of its persistence?
I know a judo wrestler that has been exercising for a while, and she was not so distinguished among the others. In fact, she has admitted that when the others used to learn something for a day, she got stuck and wasn’t able to learn the same thing for two days. But she didn’t quit.
And you know what? She stands first in the international rankings by the International Judo Federation in the −52 kg category. I am talking about Majlinda Kelmendi.
Also, the Nobel Prize Winner, Albert Einstein has been messing with mathematics for a long time and, although he was considered as a genius, he said:
“Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
So, instead of thinking whether you should quit or not, try to ask yourself whether you are liking what you are doing or not. If you like programming or anything else and you are having problems in it, you should calm down, do your best and be patient, because Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.
And here you can hear a speech where some Google employees debunk the myth about the genius programmer.
