I’m developing this theory that says “You have to fail in order to succeed”.
I’ve come to realise that a lot of modern programming requires a comprehensive grasp of such a massive range of skills and knowledge that it’s impossible to get a handle on it all at the first pass. So many different concepts, so much detail, so many ways to get it wrong that failure the first couple of times through is just about inevitable.
I was going to finish that sentence with the words “for anyone under the age of 17”.
However, experience tells me that I’ve answered enough programming questions for totally confused VBCity members in the under-21s age bracket to know that the popular conception that it “all just comes naturally to kids” isn’t true. Not all of them, anyway.
I find that thought oddly reassuring when I’ve reached that point late at night when I’m ready to hurl keyboard, mouse and computer books at the wall.
I’ll give you a good example of my theory in action. I’ve struggled several times to get to grips with web page development. The word “struggle” doesn’t even begin to describe the pitch black depths of frustration, anger and despair I’ve suffered at the hands of web development in general and ASP.Net in particular. No sooner do I manage to crack one barrier than another equally totally incomprehensible one leaps into the gap to take its place.
If I wasn’t so pig headed, this story wouldn’t be here for the telling. I’d have just done the sensible thing, given up on web programming and taken up something much less painful – barefoot marathon running, prize fighting with psychotic murderers or self-mutilation, perhaps.
But I do keep on going back to it. And keep on failing. And keep on giving up.
However, I do find that each time I approached it from a different angle, maybe via a different tutorial or a different book, then some of the terms that I’d only hazily understood previously do begin to make a kind of sense. And so I’d be able to move a little further forward. Often just a very little.
I’d like to announce the grand opening of my fabulous new web site www.ivecrackedit.net where I’m able to show off my vast range of web programming skills to an eagerly waiting world.
I’d like to. Sadly, I’d like to be handsome, rich, under 30 and universally popular too .
Oh well, one out of five ain’t bad, I suppose.
The good news is that it’s getting easier. Each new pitfall gets logged into the skills bank as it gets cracked. Step by painstaking step - strike that; make it “step by painful step” - I’m getting there.
Is there a moral, a point or a message to this story? Well, if there is then it has to be “Don’t give up!”. If a whole bunch of people who aren’t wearing capes and a T-shirt with a big “S” on it can make their livelihood out of producing fully working web applications (plus all the under-17’s who don’t post up questions), then there’s got to be hope for the rest of us mere mortals.
So, if - like me – you’re a frustrated but determined wannabe web developer then maybe at this point we should all stand, join hands and belt out our best rendering of “High Hopes”. I can really empathise with that ol’ ram bashing his head on that big old dam. C’mon then, all together now …….
.. and when we’ve done that, let’s pick up another book, do another advanced search on VBCity and – who knows – another dam wall may get broken as we break through yet another knowledge barrier.
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(Adapted from "Diary of a .NET Newbie", devCity Newsletter December 2004. )