You are a n00b. Don't worry about it. You might think you are not. You might even think you have a shit-ton of experience because you wrote your first program when you were 5 and you've got a CS degree and you have worked on many personal projects and some freelance stuff. But your lack of self-confidence and your view of everybody else's mental processes show that you are new to the industry, you might be suffering from impostor syndrome, and your boss/employers might be taking advantage of that by giving you the n00b treatment, which basically consists on assigning you titanic tasks you are not prepared to do and leave you to your own devices, requesting that you finish them in what would barely be enough time for somebody who has done it a million times already (and charges a much higher rate for doing it). You are cannon fodder. You will either get through this phase and move on to the next level where you can accurately assess your competences and delegate to your underlings whatever tasks you are not fully capable of doing efficiently yet and don't care about; or you will burn out, give up and let your career die. I don't think you have just discovered you are not a genius. But not everybody in the industry is a genius. In fact there are very few, and soon enough you will be spending most of your time battling with less experienced, less competent people suffering from Dunning–Kruger effect delusions and their clusterfucks. Because they are the fewer, but boy do they mess up.
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#52>The time seems to be lost mostly to choosing between options (such as libraries to use), in deciding how to integrate those libraries into my source code
I think you're beating yourself up too much. A lot of good programmers feel the same way. [1][2][3] If you haven't done something before, it's going to take longer[4]. Also, spending more time initially isn't bad, if it will save you time in the future.
Part of the reason, you might feel that you're lagging, is that the landscape changes so fast. In another thread, someone pointed out the most productive programmers use a stable set of tools and know them inside out. [5] If you have to keep learning new libraries, this will slow down your productivity. Also, contra to what another poster said, taking notes is a good thing. I frequently come across situations where I feel I've done something, so I look back at my notes or git commits. If I have to make all the same mistakes again, it will take 3-4x as long.
1 - http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
2 - https://the-pastry-box-project.net/ed-finkler/2014-july-6
3 - http://www.marco.org/2014/07/11/developers-dystopian-future
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#53Slow is fine. Don't worry about it. Nicotine, and cholinergenic smart drugs like the racetam family and substances like centrophenoxine can boost focus memory and learning temporarily but really you likely only have a perceived deficit. We're not super human - none of us. A few might seem smarter or better or faster or whatever but interest and careful slow observation will almost always win out, and they're likely t…
Do you have a link for [2]?
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#54> "I have always been a slow programmer" I'll try to make this post as short as I can, so forgive me if it seems abrupt. I'm going to take the opportunity to explore the possibility that you have no talent for programming. You should still take the advice to check out sleeping patterns, fitness, health, etc. First, take a look at this website: http://the-programmers-stone.com/the-original-talks/day-1-th... It's the f…
Damn. Thankyou for making me feel better about my coding haha. Some interesting things to look up too.
That oacker vs mapper is interesting, id definatly fall into the mapper territory, although theres times id like a little more mapper!
Cheers!
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#55I don't think the power to quickly do things like you're describing is a cognitive ability. The more of your job you can move _out_ of the "thinking" part of your brain into the habit part, the more quickly it goes.
Being a "regular" software engineer is all about building a large internal collection of idioms that you can reach for to build what you need, not to methodically think through each step.
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#56Try memorizing a ~100 or less code. It may be an algorithm or something fundamental in computer science. You'll notice that it would take a long time to digest it in your head but just keep on trying (I actually memorized it in a month.). Just keep on repeating until you can recall all the code. Eventually, when you've memorized 70% of the code, you'll feel that it is simple to repeat.
What I'm trying to say is that while you keep on doing something repeatedly, your brain absorbs it. Your example could be difficult and time consuming at first. But when you keep on doing it repeatedly many many times you'll realize it to be simple. That's what training is.
Vim/Emacs users can understand what I mean from when they started using it the first time until using it for years.
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#57You may be chronically sleep deprived and not realize it. If that's the case you should try sleeping really consistently for a week and check the difference. Don't use an alarm, just be really disciplined about going to sleep early enough to wake up naturally. No caffeine or other stimulants. The difference between a well rested brain and a sleep deprived one is night and day.
I have the same annoying problem,and this seems to be my living pattern
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#58I am exactly like you. I have been doing this thing from about couple of years, and I also think I am not getting anywhere. I have lost most of the interest that I once had for programming, and I just sleep and take meds for my ADHD now. I don't program a lot these days. So, thanks for asking.
You might be depressed. At least, that was the case with me when I started sleeping all the time and lost interest in programming. I finally got the courage to explain it to a doctor, was prescribed some meds, and a couple months later was back to normal.
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#59Slow is fine. Don't worry about it. Nicotine, and cholinergenic smart drugs like the racetam family and substances like centrophenoxine can boost focus memory and learning temporarily but really you likely only have a perceived deficit. We're not super human - none of us. A few might seem smarter or better or faster or whatever but interest and careful slow observation will almost always win out, and they're likely t…
Do you have a link for [2]?
It's in the wikipedia article.
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#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same question. Is taking a whole day to set up an authentication system for a web application unreasonable? That's a pretty critical component and not necessarily simple. At my, erm, last company, it took multiple developers three months to set one up and we're still tweaking it. I'm with @funkysquid. A few extra hours to properly implement and test code that is going to see months if not year of critical f…
Agreed here too. I graduated first in my class of 200-odd engineering students, then completed a Master's degree with a perfect GPA and a couple papers published (on top of my thesis). A couple years later I started web programming, eventually building a relatively successful web-based business. Nothing in the OP sounds like a symptom of slow thinking to me. Doing something reasonably complex with unfamiliar tools sh…
if you already know the library you're using inside and out and have built such a thing before, maybe you could whip it out in a couple hours
This is the key, I think. I was in the same boat as OP not so long ago in thinking that I was unreasonably slow. I'm not; I'm just a generalist.
People who specialize in one specific area of technology can bang out something in their wheelhouse in a few hours because that's all they do, all day, every day. It makes them seem like superheroes. If you're working on a team with all specialists, it can make you look even slower by comparison.
As for what to do about it, I'm stuck between either finding a specialty, going into management, selling my own software products (ie: work for myself) or finding a way of communicating my work in a way that makes me look like a superhero too.