Trust The Process

I was recently preparing giving a talk to university students. As I prepared a number of tips for people in the same shoes a couple years ago I was reminded of the time when I was learning to code.

Learning to program is not easy

At least it wasn't easy for me.

Almost exactly 5 and a half years ago I gave up my plushy office job as a lawyer and jumped into the world of programming.

At first learning to code was excruciating. I remember struggling a lot with basic concepts. Things like reference equality in JavaScript or inheritance in object oriented programming seemed so unnatural to me.

I remember getting frustrated that I wasn't learning fast enough. That I was somehow 'falling behind'. That I wasn't getting 'results'. I started to doubt whether I had the aptitude for programming.

But over time with enough trial and error I realised that my thinking had been flawed.

It wasn't that I wasn't good enough, it was because I didn't trust the learning process.

The process is the most important thing in programming

The biggest breakthrough for me when learning to program happened about two months in after my career shift.

The class I was learning programming was holding a hackathon. We were to make a game, any game. I decided to try to make a 2D game Pokemon jumping game. Using canvas and JavaScript I managed to hack together a half-decent game (* with poor collision detection).

But the most important thing was during the process I enjoyed myself and learned a whole bunch. I probably didn't understand 90% of the code that I wrote and it was ugly code.

But in the process of problem solving I realised how enjoyable it was. From that day on I tried to do program or learn something about programming everyday that fascinated me. And over the next few months I started enjoying the process of learning over trying to reach whatever arbitrary goal that I thought I needed to reach.

It definitely wasn't fast. Somethings just took a lot of time to process. And somethings didn't become clear until many years on.

The Secret

But therein lied the secret. The enjoyment of the process of learning was the thing I had lacked. In my tunnel-visioned desire to quickly become something I missed the fact that learning to program to take time.

The thing with programming it is not something you can just pick up and gain mastery. As with most things, but especially in programming good things take time.

The process matters. And the time you spend matters.

Over the five years that followed I re-realised this again and again. In programming, learning needs to be constant, consistent. To be a good programmer means you need to be willing to learn and re-learn again and again and be fundamentally interested in what you are learning. That's the only way you can get good and stay good.

The great thing about programming in comparison to other professions is that over time you see yourself level up.

Conclusion

For anyone struggling I really encourage you to not to lose heart.

Yes programming can be hard, especially at the start. But if you keep at it and slow down to enjoy the process, you will get better and better until eventually before you know it you will be great.

Just make sure when you get there to not forget to keep learning and continue with the process.

Trust the process.