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Ask HN: Am I incompotent for web development?

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Ask HN: Am I incompotent for web development?

#1

Post by m0xai »

Hello,

i am a foreigner Bachelor Student (Business Informatics) in Germany (came a half year ago). I had experience with HTML and CSS. One and half year ago, I decided to learn JavaScript also. I completed FreeCodeCamp course and The Odin Project. My Portfolio was enough to get my first working student job as a web developer on December 2022.

I then started with Tasks like removing the BootstrapVue UI Library and replace with regular Bootstrap in small projects. That took like 60h, because I had to learn vue first. My colleagues said but nothing negative about my work.

Yesterday was for me like disaster. I worked until 22 o'clock, (I had to stop at 17 o'clock) to find out that I'm running a microservice in a Docker Container and the changes I made on a mail template had no effect, when I send them, since I was working on local files. I feel myself an idiot and can't tell anyone.

Am I doing the right job? I can surely say, that I love frontend development and also backend with java and Python. But loving a theme is enough to do it as a job?

Edit: Thanks for all your comments, all of them very supportive and made my day better. This long-time failing experience is the first time in my life, so maybe I had to live and deal with it. And yes, I love what I do and how I feel. For me there isn't any better feeling, after fixing a bug/completing a task. From now on, I will reading the docs more and not trying hunt the exact answer on stackoverflow at first place.

Re: Ask HN: Am I incompotent for web development?

#2

Post by PaulHoule »

Most software development work involves maintaining existing systems, each of these is unique and requires you to learn the details of a particular system and all the tools, libraries, frameworks, etc. used by that system.

It’s is a lot to know and all of us who do it have stories like the ones you tell.

Re: Ask HN: Am I incompotent for web development?

#4

Post by arkitaip »

Web dev is in a state of shit where devs are pushed towards increasingly complex and fragile stacks. The fact that you're learning Vue, micro services, docker and god knows what else just to do front end is sad and doesn't reflect on your competence or ability.

Eventually you will learn this stack but unfortunately be forced to learn a new one fairly soon. That's the real challenge with web dev: are you ready to do old stuff in new ways because trends change so fast?

Re: Ask HN: Am I incompotent for web development?

#5

Post by samizdis »

You like development work and you are willing to learn and to put in the hours. Putting into practice what you have learnt in real-life situations is always going to throw a few spanners in your way that you can't possibly avoid without prior experience. Don't worry about it. It's not you, it's life. Don't beat yourself up about it.

Try learning through socialising, too. Reach out socially to rookies with whom you can share tales of woe - and maybe laugh together about them, and congratulate each other on the experience gained from them - and reach out to experienced devs who are willing to mentor rather than criticise you for understandable mistakes that they've probably forgotten they used to make themselves.

I truly doubt that you are incompetent, and I know for sure that you are not incompotent, and I really hope that you don't mind a bit of wry humour ;-)

Best wishes on your path to confidence and success.

Re: Ask HN: Am I incompotent for web development?

#6

Post by throwaway4good »

What you describe is pretty normal, so stick with it and don't be too hard on yourself.

Don't be afraid to ask for a second pair of eyes though.

Often the teddy bear effect of you having to explain what you are trying to do will make you see the solution immediately (ie. why are my changes not coming through ... because I am editing the wrong set of files etc.).

Re: Ask HN: Am I incompotent for web development?

#7

Post by wefarrell »

You have imposter syndrome which is normal. You’re just beginning your career and it’s normal for you to feel like you’re falling short compared to more experienced colleagues. The best thing you can do right now is be honest and vulnerable to your senior coworkers (unless they’re assholes). Finding good mentors and getting feedback is the best way to quickly level up your skill set.

Re: Ask HN: Am I incompotent for web development?

#8

Post by rvense »

Nothing you say suggests that there's anything wrong with you. A lot of this job is knowing stupid details, and once you get to tools like Docker, what's happening under the hood is actually quite complicated and there's a lot to understand. You just don't notice except when things don't work. It takes a long time to get really familiar with one stack, and even longer to learn enough to fully be able to connect the dots.

One thing I try to remember when I'm mashing away at some dumb thing for hours that I don't understand (8 years in, it still happens a lot), I try to leave it for an hour or till the morning if possible to clear my head, or better yet I ask a co-worker to let me try to explain the problem. Sometimes they can help, sometimes just talking about it to another person is enough for you to discover what's the actual issue.

Re: Ask HN: Am I incompotent for web development?

#10

Post by maartenh »

Argh. We all have these stories of lost hours because of an assumption that proved to be wrong.

Nowadays, whenever I help someone debug an issue, I insist on starting from zero assumptions (by making self depricating jokes, and stating that I need to understand the context properly).

Furthermore, the culture/way of communicating in German might a _lot_ more direct and interpretable as negative than in Brazil. I'm Dutch, and we're known for our directness, but I've ben upset by some Germans before by how negative they can be about some work. They didn't intend this at all, they were just unaware of how their communication landed.

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