Preface

After having spent several years learning how to program, I found myself finally being able to work on other's projects and submit pull requests to software I enjoyed using.

It didn't take long however, to find myself growing an utter disgrace for it, something that used to feel rewarding and purposeful.

Problem

The problem was, that I started expecting too much of myself, too soon, as everyone around me seemed to get a thousand tasks done on a daily basis. This left me feeling jealous, lacking in skill and overall a failure as a programmer.

Months passed by where every other week, I spent many hours of my day trying to get as many things done as possible. Rarely taking breaks, while developing a growing hatred for programming as opposed to developing software.

More often than I wished, my changes would await for approval by others.

Conclusion

I guess the message is clear by now, do not program for the sake of "being a good programmer". Instead, pay close attention to knowing what you wanna do, how you are going to do it, who will be involved, etc.

Good programmers are good programmers because they know how to approach big projects in small steps, not because they create an internet browser overnight. Not all those questions need to be answered, but the clearer the goal the easier it will be to reach it.

My goal for today was to write a small article about this topic, it doesn't have to be perfect, but I hope whoever reads it benefits from what took me quite a while to figure out.