Ask HN: Maybe I kind of suck as a programmer – how do I supercharge my work?

Over the past 3 years, I've released a few apps on iOS: not bad, nothing that would amaze anyone here. The code is generally messy and horrible, rife with race conditions and barely holding together in parts. (Biggest: 30k LOC.) While I'm proud of my work — especially design-wise — I feel most of my time was spent on battling stupid bugs. I haven't gained any specialist knowledge — just bloggable API experience. There's nothing I could write a book about.

Meanwhile, when I compulsively dig through one-man frameworks like YapDatabase, Audiobus, or AudioKit, I am left in awe! They're brimming with specialist knowledge. They're incredibly documented and organized. Major features were added over the course of weeks! People have written books about these frameworks, and they were created by my peers — probably alongside other work. Same with one-man apps like Editorial, Ulysses, or GoodNotes.

I am utterly baffled by how knowledgeable and productive these programmers are. If I'm dealing with a new topic, it can take weeks to get a lay of the land, figure out codebase interactions, consider all the edge cases, etc. etc. But the commits for these frameworks show that the devs basically worked through their problems over mere days — to say nothing of getting the overall architecture right from the start. An object cache layer for SQL? Automatic code gen via YAML? MIDI over Wi-Fi? Audio destuttering? Pff, it took me like a month to add copy/paste to my app!

I'm in need of some recalibration. Am I missing something? Is this quality of work the norm, or are these just exceptional programmers? And even if they are, how can I get closer to where they're standing? I don't want to wallow in my mediocrity, but the mountain looks almost insurmountable from here! No matter the financial cost or effort, I want to make amazing things that sustain me financially; but I can't do that if it takes me ten times as long to make a polished product as another dev. How do I get good enough to consistently do work worth writing books about?

The biggest thing that accelerated my growth was working with people who were much much better than I was. You'll learn so much faster, and become so much better than you can ever by just plugging away by yourself.

Just remain humble and open to learning and you'll wake up one day and realize you're actually not bad at this programming thing ;)

"Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher"

– Japanese Proverb

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One of my favorite answers -

71. How do you get good at programming?

I believe that there are two ways to get good at anything, "push" and "pull".

Push: You learn from books, classes, mentors, and studying examples, then apply what you have learned.

Pull: You have a problem that you must solve, then you learn what you need, any way you can, to build the solution.

I suppose there are pros and cons of each method, and I imagine that many people here have used some of both.

For the record, I am 100% Pull. I have absolutely no formal training. It took me 2 years to find my first job and then I was thrown into the deep end. It was simultaneously frustrating and exhilarating. There were so many times I didn't know what to do or didn't have enough "tools" in my box. So I had to figure it out and find sources of learning. But I always did. Any when I got that first thing working and then saw my customer's eyes light up, I was hooked.

Your CS degree may make you think that you're a "push" learner, but may I suggest that you adopt a "pull" approach. Forget what you think you know and find a job or a project or someone who has a real need. Then build what you need. You a several advantages over me: (a) It shouldn't take you long to find that job/demand/customer. Just keep looking. (b) You already have tools in your tool box, maybe not the right ones for the job, but you have "something". And (c) It's easier than ever to adopt a "pull" approach. Help is everywhere.

You may feel frustrated, but I don't think you have a problem at all. You're in a great (and very normal) situation. Just adjust you attitude, find something to build, and do it.

Programming languages are just a bunch of random symbols and letters; each language has different syntax. But underlying them all is the same foundation of how languages are created. Learn to read your code like an essay rather than simply focusing on the sentence.