Coding Woes

I was sitting in front of my laptop last night, scouring the web trying to figure out why my HTML page was not displaying on the screen properly, and having troubles, like people (especially beginners), often do. And I started feeling kind of down on myself like maybe I’m not smart enough or good enough to figure this kind of stuff out. I actually started feeling a little depressed because I wanted to solve the problem so bad last night, but I’d stayed up too late already.

I’m sure this is a completely normal part of coding, because computers require such exact instructions to do exactly what we want them to do, in fact, I know it is. And I should not be so hard on myself, because for all intents and purposes I am a beginner. As much as I hate the idea that I am a beginner and I wish I knew so much more, coding is something that I am working on. That’s the whole reason I am spending all this time learning from the ground up. I intend to always be learning new things about technology and coding.

My point is, though – I need to own up to being a beginner coder, and I need to stop treating that fact like it’s a bad thing – it is what it is, nothing more and nothing less. When I start getting a lot more practice under my belt, and I am able to do some things on my own without consulting Google every couple minutes, I might be a little beyond a beginner.

But being a beginner is great! All of my trial and error and pain and suffering now could possibly pay off in a big way, in the far far future. Some day, I will know what I am doing with code and I will be able to throw some pseudocode together like it’s nothing, but today – I am a student. I’m doing my best to learn everything I need to know, and all on my own (with the help of the internet). And I am learning things! I can do a lot more with code today than when I started a month ago. I just gotta remind myself that it’s all going to be okay. Because it will, I just have to keep trying.