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Re: undefined

#11

Post by SignMeTheHELLUp »

jagger27 wrote: post #8
SignMeTheHELLUp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel strikingly similar to the OP I'm glad you said that. If you feel comfortable doing so, could you share an anecdote? If a few people describe this from different angles perhaps more will come out of the woodwork and offer some solutions. I think the person you were replying to was gently suggesting to see a psychiatrist.

Sure. This is an extreme example. I'm just starting my third of university software engineering and I've been dreaming up a moderately ambitious (but technically straightforward) CRUD web app since early in my first year. Since then I've flipped and switched between countless frameworks and languages, shelved, reassessed, unshelved, reshelved, and scrapped many basic prototypes. Only recently I've made some progress…

See, I'm out in the industry now but back when I was studying I could have written almost exactly the same thing. I wish you all the best.

Re: undefined

#12

Post by Codhisattva »

[deleted] wrote: post #7
Codhisattva wrote: post #6

You need to speak with your doctor first. You may be out of shape, you may have a vitamin deficiency, you may have something complicated. The answer is in a doctor's office, not HN.

[deleted]

My point is no one can know what your issue is. It takes tests, experience and knowledge of medical professionals to find out what your issue is. If you are open about your symptoms, your feelings and your concerns a good doctor will order tests. They might show something or they might show nothing. The doctor might consider it to be psychological instead of physical so you might be referred to a therapist.

Diagnosing humans is pretty damn hard and will take time. Stick with finding a solution.

Re: undefined

#13

Post by nostrademons »

jagger27 wrote: post #8
SignMeTheHELLUp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel strikingly similar to the OP I'm glad you said that. If you feel comfortable doing so, could you share an anecdote? If a few people describe this from different angles perhaps more will come out of the woodwork and offer some solutions. I think the person you were replying to was gently suggesting to see a psychiatrist.

Sure. This is an extreme example. I'm just starting my third of university software engineering and I've been dreaming up a moderately ambitious (but technically straightforward) CRUD web app since early in my first year. Since then I've flipped and switched between countless frameworks and languages, shelved, reassessed, unshelved, reshelved, and scrapped many basic prototypes. Only recently I've made some progress…

This is analysis paralysis. It's not a mental deficiency, but rather an anti-pattern usually brought on by insecurity and lack of knowledge about which decisions are actually important:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis

The way out of it is just to pick something and see how far it takes you, accepting that you may have to backtrack and redo stuff in the future. There's this myth that experts got that way through good decisions; no, usually experts got that way because they made a lot of bad decisions really quickly and dealt with the consequences, and so now they know not to make them again.

Re: undefined

#15

Post by funkysquid »

I think another question to ask yourself is, why do you feel this isn't normal?

If others claim they could do the task faster, consider that programmers chronically underestimate.

If you've seen others do it faster, it's possible that they are taking shortcuts, making quicker decisions that will involve more work later. From your example, you've carefully picked a library and thought through how to integrate it properly into your code - these steps can be skipped for speed, but the cost usually isn't worth it.

There are always going to be better programmers, but they're often not the ones who claim to be great, or fast, or rockstars. So I'd just check to make sure you're not making unfair comparisons of yourself.

Re: undefined

#17

Post by maratd »

staunch wrote: post #10

You 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.

> The difference between a well rested brain and a sleep deprived one is night and day.

When I don't get 8-9 hours of sleep, I code exactly the way OP described. Things that normally take an hour, take a full day because I can't focus and miss the most embarrassing, basic stuff.

Re: undefined

#18

Post by rhizome »

jagger27 wrote: post #8
SignMeTheHELLUp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel strikingly similar to the OP I'm glad you said that. If you feel comfortable doing so, could you share an anecdote? If a few people describe this from different angles perhaps more will come out of the woodwork and offer some solutions. I think the person you were replying to was gently suggesting to see a psychiatrist.

Sure. This is an extreme example. I'm just starting my third of university software engineering and I've been dreaming up a moderately ambitious (but technically straightforward) CRUD web app since early in my first year. Since then I've flipped and switched between countless frameworks and languages, shelved, reassessed, unshelved, reshelved, and scrapped many basic prototypes. Only recently I've made some progress…

The way this works for me is that ideas in and of themselves are easy: you have a mental image of how it works (a web page!) and maybe articulated a few sentences about how the parts fit together. The thing is, implementation is much more complicated and tedious than this. "Oh, a site with users, posts, likes, tags, and search." Then you start getting into it and parts start taking you a week and then your brain starts tumbling over itself, conflicted between how easy the idea is to explain and how involved the production of it is.

Let's go to the redoubtable Yegge and his concept of "Shit's Easy Syndrome":

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...

Stick with it. The set-up is long, but it pays off handsomely.

Re: undefined

#19

Post by rgbrenner »

funkysquid wrote: post #15

I think another question to ask yourself is, why do you feel this isn't normal? If others claim they could do the task faster, consider that programmers chronically underestimate. If you've seen others do it faster, it's possible that they are taking shortcuts, making quicker decisions that will involve more work later. From your example, you've carefully picked a library and thought through how to integrate it prope…

If you've seen others do it faster,

Also consider that they may have used that library previously.. so you don't get to see them spend a whole day making mistakes with it and trying to get it working.

Re: undefined

#20

Post by readme »

>To given an example it can easily take me a whole day to set up something as simple as an authentication system for a web application

If you are writing your own, it should take more than a day. You can't just slap it together and expect it to be right. That's why there are companies like Stormpath.

What you probably need to do is work on building some reusable library of personal code so that you can get shit running faster. Base it off one of the major frameworks and just make some boilerplate projects that you can check out and get up and running fast. Try to reuse code. You don't have to write reusable modules to reuse your code. Just have a skeleton project that makes things faster.

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