Quite often people get stuck on a particular development problem and just sit there, staring at the screen for hours, hoping for the right solution to pop and enlighten their day.
And…it never does.
It turns out that developing software is far more different than solving problems in school.
In school you have a correct answer. That’s how teachers grade students (which is flawed by nature). In programming (and in life in general), you always have many right answers. That’s the beauty of it (and that’s why the school doesn’t work in practice).
So, instead of just sitting there and thinking about the big problem in front of you, what you could easily do is start experimenting. And more importantly – start failing as soon as possible.
I know, it sounds counterintuitive, but think about it for a second. You know the saying that every time you fail to do “the thing,” you discover a new way how not to do “the thing”. Therefore, why are you afraid of breaking things? Why are you afraid of being wrong?
In fact, being wrong is the inevitable step of the process to becoming right.
So, once again, what are you waiting for? You just waste precious time.
Start building, start breaking, start being wrong and get comfortable failing. It’s the yin-yang of the creator. You must be wrong in order to become right. So, please get things wrong. You’re not in school anymore.
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