I made a fedi post about ADHD-y burn-out earlier, and it got me thinking — we should probably try to normalise:

“Today I got stuck on what should have been a really basic programming task and I needed to ask for help”

in our everyday lives, if not for my own mental health, for (often newer, but not always) developers getting really down and upset because they are struggling with something. I see that way too often in the communities I’m active in and in mentoring that I do.

We’re very good at posting about our “wins” (and rightly so, we should celebrate doing something cool!), but it can often paint a picture of tech being easy, and that if you’re struggling, you’re not good at it.

I don’t understand Vue and that sorta stuff — its evidently a different way of doing things (even discounting the fact its front-end magic which I normally don’t feel comfy touching..)

I can muddle through writing it and produce a reasonable result, but it’s difficult for me and I have to search for docs and examples constantly.

I really don’t enjoy it (and yes, I know, its work and we don’t always enjoy work) — it’s burning me out trying to figure out “the Vue way of doing {thing}” when I know the {other language} way of getting it done.

That all of course manifests as “I am bad at programming.” instead of “I am not confident at Vue”. Too often I see others doing the same thing.

  • This shit is not easy.
  • Just because some of it is easy to you, doesn’t mean what you’re doing is easy.
  • Programming can suck — its why developers burn out & why dorks on the internet spend more time releasing debugging utilities than writing “actual programs”.