The code epiphany
Honestly, I’ve been feeling pretty down and hopeless this past week, and I think it comes from looking through so many job posts and trying to perfect my CV and such. I have a really bad case of imposter syndrome and can’t shake off the feeling of not knowing what I’m doing.
So for this week we were making an API with Express. And I started out with looking at the lecture and coded along. That alone took me through the passing goals and some of the more advanced goals and while I always make sure that I don’t add a line of code that I don’t understand in my projects, it still made me feel like I haven’t really archived anything. So I decided to focus on the career path instead, once again thinking though my life decisions.
When CV writing got me down again, I went back to my project and thought since I have so much time left I might as well add something more to it. I looked though it and thought it probably needed an endpoint that sorts the data a bit. So I figured out what I probably had to do, wrote down the code how it probably should be AND. IT. WORKED. Right away, the first try. Didn’t have to look up anything, not even the correct syntax. I did that. I used only my brain power to actually write down some code that actually worked. I’M A SMART PERSON! Usually I do this, I figure out how it should work and write down some code that I think how it should be, it doesn’t work so I have to look it up and then the imposter syndrome comes along and slaps me in the face.
I kind of hade the same reaction to React (heh). I thought it was really easy to understand in the beginning, totally forgot what props was two weeks later and then had a revelation in the Redux-sprint when we did reusable components, everything clicked into place and now props makes absolute sense again.
So I happily typed away on my project, adding parameters, queries and filters. And everything I’ve been struggling with so far suddenly seem to fall into place. It was a really nice feeling. I finished up my project, ran into some problems that I easily solved, looked up the documentations how to properly write code for a REST-API (which I probably should have done from the beginning) and just cleaned up the code a bit, and felt like a god.
So it just seems like my brain need some time to put things in place sometimes. It’s quite frustrating when you actually know what to do but can’t exactly remember how it was done. I usually know how to approach the problem, I know the solution but I can’t for the love of my life remember the syntax to get it down. And I think it’s time to realize that just memorizing things is not the same thing as knowledge. It is alright not to remember the correct syntax right away but after having written it a hundred times you probably will. It’s usually just a googling away anyway. The most important thing is that you know that you can solve it.