Hello,
I would really love to get some advice on how to get over a very serious case of impostor syndrome?
Every time when I can’t do an exercise I immediately think,
“Why do I bother? It’s obvious that this is not for me. Other people ask serious questions and I can’t even deploy my website to Heroku. I should just stop, pointless waste of energy and time”
This is today, I started googling how to become a language teacher instead.
But that’s not what I want. I like writing code, I fell in love with Python. I see myself writing AI and VR softwares later. It’s soooooo exciting and this is our future!
But I need to get over this fear of not enough somehow and I’m hoping, you guys would have some advice.
Working with more experienced devs has taught me that pretty much everyone suffers from this from time to time.
The way I see it, software development is about solving problems. By definition, you are pretty much ALWAYS doing something you don’t know how to do yet.
Instead of thinking about the current thing you can’t do, remember the many times you have not been able to do something and subsequently gone on to not only learn how to do it, but later find it trivially easy. You have learned to do things many people never learn. You can learn plenty more things besides!
Take the Node JS master Class. If your in the US or near the Bay the course or more than half off. will teach you to code with your own modules. Make sure to use the website,
Sounds a lot more like defeating self talk than impostors syndrome. It seems this is what you want to do, but when things get challenging, your inner voice tries to tell you to just stop. The key would be to remind yourself why this is important to you, so that you arent so quick to give up when the going gets tough.
it may help to read the help sections…seeing others struggle and reaching out for help may be the reminder you need that you aren’t the only one, for one, and for two, there are people out there willing to offer help when you need it. Also, maybe keep a little list of the reason why you love this, what your ultimate goal is, stuff like that as a visual reminder will help to quiet the negative self talk too.
As for impostor syndrome, I dont think that ever truly goes away…I heard that if you do things right, you will never be the smartest person in the room, and will always surround yourself with people who know more than you do…which means more opportunity to learn. It sucks when you doubt you have the skills and are afraid people will find out how little you know! But…I hear that with more time, you get more comfortable with what you do know, and also with accepting there are things you dont know. I havnt reached that point yet…still so much to learn! lol
So here’s the thing, affirmation helps, accomplishing things helps, working with peers help
It’s never going to go away, but it shouldn’t paralyze you.
It’s little things like answering questions, finishing a feature, completing a small proof of concept app for a blog post, even having a conversation and sound like you know what you’re talking about.
As outsiders, we put the profession on a pedestal sometimes, but real developers google, read medium article and follow tutorials all the time, too. They also run into blocks.
Talk to more people and developer, help with problems and ask more questions. Like anything, there are people better and people worse at certain things than you, and you learn either way. Don’t legitimize self-doubt into an excuse to stop.
keep accomplishing to affirm to yourself that you are not an imposter
Failure is the best teacher
So if you aren’t failing, your probably aren’t learning. Programming isn’t easy, but I believe anyone can do it, all you need is time and determination.
Just remember everyone started not knowing anything, even the best programmers at one point didn’t know anything and were failing just like you are right now. Just like anything, it takes time and practice.
Keep grinding, fail 500 times, or fail 5 million times, you will learn 5 million ways to do something wrong, giving you the experience to eventually succeed. You shouldn’t see lack of knowledge as a failure of yourself, rather you should see it as an opportunity to succeed The only people I’ve met that can’t program are the ones who never try or give up. So never think you can’t do it, there’s no programmer gene, there’s only those that are willing to put in the time and effort, and those that aren’t It’s up to you to ultimately decide if your up to it, but if that’s what you want todo, the only person that can stop you is, well you
I just started pursuing coding as well, so I cannot support from an experienced perspective, BUT sometimes just hearing you’re not alone is helpful.
You said 4-5 things in your original post that I have no clue what they are. You probably didn’t when you started either, but you do now.
I just finished the 300 hours of Responsive Web Design and had no idea how to build the first Tribute Page project afterwards. Completely lost. The worst part was I wrote what I could with HTML5 elements and the hit a wall, forked the example site and saw every section was in div’s. Now I don’t know if I’m missing something or if the way that example site was written is just outdated.
I’M 36 and I’ve worked in retail for 15+ years and worked my way up to making $100,000+ p/yr. I don’t say that pridefully, or to boast; I sold my soul to get there and it was not for me. The worklife balance and stress sucked and I wasn’t creating anything. I was miserable. I took a step back and am just barely getting by now, but I now have time to pursue learning this.
Even being completely lost, just LEARNING coding it’s better than where I was before. I’m not going to give up, you shouldn’t give up either.
#crobinson661
My main interest is Python, I’m doing FFC on the side and don’t worry I’m not giving up, I love coding, I love creating, it’s beautiful when I write a piece of code and suddenly a window appears on my screen and voila I have a bookstore app. My baby came alive. This is the best feeling!!
I’m just not too confident and mistakes and errors …
It’s good to see some encouragement sometimes though.
