The programming talent myth

I've never met a really good programmer who cared much about how quickly she finished a project. Only about doing it right.

On the other hand, I've met a lot of bad programmers who were really concerned with writing code quickly, or bragged about how fast they could code, who's output was terrible.

Now it may be that a skilled programmer comes to an answer more quickly than an unskilled one. But it's also true that a sloppy programmer comes to an answer more quickly than a careful one.

It seems like you felt overwhelmed by all the various parts of making music. But since you are just starting and having trouble, I wonder if it would make more sense to try to isolate the different things until they become easy enough that you can do them together.

Please forgive me if you already tried this, as you didn't mention whether you had a teacher and what music you were trying to play.

For example, if you had trouble with beats, you could try practicing the beats just by tapping your hand or singing or something else. I was ridiculously bad with rhythms (and still am?) so I have a lot of personal experience with this one.

Then, if you have trouble reading the notes, you can just write them down in a way that's easier for you to read. There's no shame in just writing down the note names! Alternatively, you could just try to memorize a single measure and practice that one measure. Again, I found myself doing this all the time, especially because on the piano you have two hands to read notes for. Of course, what might make even more sense is if you just picked easier music to play.

I think for fingering, the same advice kind of applies.. you can pick easier music, or just memorize small sections.

In a way I feel like you could use this same advice for programming as well. If you pick a super huge project and only gauge your progress for that whole project, you might get overwhelmed and feel like it's taking too long, which stresses you out. Alternatively, if you break the project down into manageable chunks, you feel good about your progress!

At least this seems to have worked for me! I don't know if this will help you at all and I apologize for being so stubborn but I really don't believe you are unable to learn an instrument unless you have some learning disability.

> The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2020 there will be a 1.5 million programming job gap, which means there will be that many jobs unfilled. That's in five years. The EU has published similar numbers, 1.2 million in 2018—three years. That means we need to be doing something to get more people into our industry.

There you have it. That's how many of us are thinking, while at the same time we suffer from ageism, wage-fixing, working overtime and being seriously underpaid in general for the value that we provide to our employers. How can we be so stupid as to care about programming jobs being filled? Is it any wonder that we end up being abused?

The years I spent trying to do software development were like beating my head against the wall. Everyone seemed to be much better than me, and it led me to give up after a few years of starting and stopping. If I couldn't even manage to make a simple application, what was the point when so many people made one every day?

So I gave up and focused on other interests, like writing and art. Writing has served me well, but doesn't interest me enough to get much written. I'm just bad at visual art, no matter how much I practice and study. Fractal art is about all I can do[1].

Then I picked up a MIDI keyboard, a DAW (first LMMS, then Studio One) and had fun making music immediately. Haven't been able to stop since. Now I'm rediscovering my interest in A/V engineering. As you can imagine, knowing a little programming helps a lot with both of these things, and that's how I found an interest in writing code.

Most of the code I wrote even before finding a need is solid, efficient, and secure. But that's because I'm so bad at it that I have to be careful. If I don't write clean, efficient code, I won't be able to understand it well enough to fix it when something goes wrong.

I think we would be better off encouraging people to try many different hobbies rather than pushing them into something they have no affinity for. Then, when something clicks, show them how programming can make it better.

[1] http://www.designbyhumans.com/shop/mkronline/