During my commute to home from office, I got an idea about an app that I really needed and it could be built easily. And I couldn't wait to get home and start building it ... I was super excited...( You know the feeling when you are so clear about what you are going to do that you start to think in code )

Now it has been half an hour since I am stuck on this error , looking at my screen , pulling my hair while sitting on a chair in the posture of a f*cking question mark! Thinking about why I did I even choose to do this for a living , I could have sold vegetables and be happier.

This is just beginning of my career , is this how I am going to spend rest of my life?

No, because you begin to intuit solutions to common problems. Even across languages, frameworks, and platforms. Eventually you see errors or have a feel for problems and "just know" how to fix them. The hard part is gaining that intuition. Also, stepping away, let your brain work on it while you do other stuff. Can help a lot too.

Fix: stop having ideas.

it is, yeah, especially if you're doing stuff that hasn't really been done before

you say a half hour and I don't mean to be condescending, but I have spent literal months trying to solve a SINGLE technical problem blocking me from success and it becomes hard to get out of bed at a certain point. knowing when to cut your losses, backtrack and approach from a different angle is key and will preserve your sanity long term

The dilemma will repeat on higher levels.

@spoiledgoods can confirm, Problems can be difficult sometimes.

@spoiledgoods I rewrite something 9 times in a couple months and can't even keep track of what the old versions did lmao

and then sometimes my output / acceptance tests get worse and not better

fucking hell

I just eventually burnt out on that but I'm probably gonna come back to it later again lmao

there came a point where my limiting factor wasn't how to do something in code, but literally just "how do I want to do this to get the outcome I want" and I literally can't decide on the best operations, or what is actually valuable to get the outcome I want. it ceases to be a coding skill problem and becomes just another life problem. it becomes an exploration of all the things I don't know in life, with the computer as an assistant calculator to carry the boring churn for you to get you to the answers faster

@Demolishun yes I get it , this happens when I do stuff that I regularly do ... In that case I usually know what to check in order to fix an error.

But for new things ... It is always like this ...

@jestdotty this is really the reason I have a huge directory of unfinished "hobby" projects.

Because I was super excited about them when I started but once I got to that point where the only way of moving forward is solving the problem that took me sleepless night(s) ... And after trying enough times I am just afraid of revisiting that project because it just triggers that insecurity of being incompetent.

@ceaser hmmm I don't know I embrace incompetence. you gotta spend time in the game and feeling foolish as fuck. the pain moulds you, like how one carves a piece of wood into a figurine. that will be your brain

Dolorem ipsum ... that is not fake Latin, that is an actual poem that says "to pursue pain... because there are some feelings that only pain can provide"
We throw ourselves into software problems because that is the only way to create actual software solutions.

That being said, a bit further into your career and you will miss those moments, crave them even. Because your entire day will be spent on pointless meetings, stupid team building exercises, mandatory safety training on the only approved way of using non-plastic coffee cups, on-boarding clueless juniors to do menial tasks, filling out forms that will never be seen again, explaining the same thing over and over to the same people, and typing your password to log in every 12 minutes.

Because the only devs allowed to code are those that can't really do it. Everyone with more than a pinch of talent is doomed to be made into an overpaid bureaucracy tool.

@JsonBoa So .... Everyone that is already where I aspire to be has this same issue ,

"Being more of a node in the corporate tree than a programmer"

@ceaser basically. To answer your first question:
no, fixing bugs all day long won't be how you spend the rest of your career. It will be a small fraction of your time. The rest will be taken by corporate bullshit, that eats more of your time as you advance your position on the corporate circles of hell.
But the pay may get really good, though.

@JsonBoa wait why is the only devs allowed to code are the ones who can't do it

@jestdotty

Because the more you stand out, the higher you go in the corporate ladder, which tends to entail more bureaucracy and less development.

It's a thing from last century really, but corporations are slow on the take.

That's why I'm many corpos, the progression ladder for devs goes straight into project management, when they are two completely different skills, (and why so many stupid project managers think they are the boss of us)

@CoreFusionX ok then say no

when you're the boss you can set the rules tho. did I play the game wrong by giving others the easier chore tickets while I worked on the complex architecture stuff? because pretty sure that's how you do it right. it's not very fun to write webpage #585 after a while, but it is fun for the newbies. so I stuck to the more complicated backend stuff, or experimenting with new tech and building proof of concept demos before handing it off and then they would just copy paste the stuff to create the same functionality elsewhere as the clients wanted. I guess I viewed myself as R&D

I don't know I don't see a conflict. they gonna fire you for not wanting to be promoted? I don't even think they tell you what promotions entail. you'll have a new boss and that boss won't necessarily care about meetings, so I'd assume you just have to get along with whoever the new boss is

@jestdotty

Well, maybe it's different for you, if so, congratulations. It was different for me too in my last company (otherwise wouldn't have started with them for 7 years).

Why people do it though? Easy. The pay is better. And salaries in corpos are usually much more adjusted than in startups.

We had the luck of working in a place where you could get promoted (hell, I even got to be CTO) without leaving our role, but that's still the less common scenario.