> For everyone else in the field it seems like this is effortless It gets easier the more you experience. I’ve been in the game for around 20 years. I still ge

> For everyone else in the field it seems like this is effortless It gets easier the more you experience. I’ve been in the game for around 20 years. I still get caught on sharp edges in code bases. Things still take longer than I originally estimate. Recently, I lost hours on a dumb docker thing because I don’t understand it as much as I would like. One of the code bases I work in from time to time still takes me sometimes days to figure out something that “should be easy,” and I’ve been in that code off and on for literally years. I think you are doing just fine. There are people in this industry who can’t code themselves out of a wet paper bag. You sound like you are already beyond what some professional programmers can do. Seek help from other contributors to the project. It could just be a shitshow of code that takes hand holding to understand.