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Discussion on: Realizations from being a frustrated developer

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Brian Knight

Thanks for posting Gene. I wonder if you may be suffering from a little survivorship bias. What you see when you wander around the development community is those projects or repos that have been completed, published, blogged about, and referenced. You never see the projects that were never finished, didn't work out, or that the author didn't take the leap of faith to make public.

Remember, there's value in practicing. There is value in not completing something because you've learned what you needed to learn from the work up to that point. If you create something that is useful or can help others or you are proud of, great! Make it public and share what you did. If you start something, make of mess of it, and learn something from it, good or bad, that's great also! It doesn't have to be complete, perfect, unique, useful, or interesting to be of value to you.

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qhkm

Wow just knew it today. I think i'm having the same problem. Thanks a lot for mentioning that 'survivorship bias'. Really appreciate it.

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gene profile image
Gene

Hi Brian! It's the first time I heard about "survivorship bias" and it is exactly on point--just like what you said in your comments. I was too blind to see the mess/struggle behind every project that made me feel those frustrations. I didn't realize those until now. It's a good thing to know. Thank you very much for adding to my answers. I appreciate it a lot!

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Jen Chan

I feel like you put a word to a feeling that I've had but didn't know there was a term for it. I've heard of survivor's guilt, but not bias. Through doing something new and difficult I'm always recognizing how I deal with it though, and the apparent fruitlessness of it to other people always seems to worsen the feeling, but I am sure of how satisfying it is to me at the end...

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Elliot Derhay

I felt this way about a specific project I ended up abandoning. But I really did learn a lot from all of the work I did. Even though the project will never be "finished", the learning part was both fun and valuable in the end.