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Hey, I'm also a self-taught developer and was hired as a junior alongside another self-taught developer, who taught himself in the space of 6 months after being

Hey, I'm also a self-taught developer and was hired as a junior alongside another self-taught developer, who taught himself in the space of 6 months after being a chef for his entire career. He smoked me! I had been programming for 5 years at that point. What was the difference between us? After working with him for a year, I still didn't know and I still don't know. I offer this to you because, you will not always be better than the people around you. That being said, its worth investigating the python debugger if you haven't already. import pdb; pdb.set_trace() - this will drop you into a debugger at the spot in execution that will allow you to examine variables and iterate through for loops. This has previously helped with my understanding of Python. But, my big message to you is to not get taught up on comparing yourself to other devs. You will excel on some things and not be great on others. You will be slower than some and faster than some. Try first of all not to stress about your performance, but keep a learning mindset. From my perspective you seem to have your heart in the right place!!!

rebelos 5y ago
A simple answer to your conundrum could be how he manages his cadence and deals with pressure. Programming isn't especially difficult in my opinion. In many cases, sheer throughput seems to have a lot more to do with success than raw talent. Someone who was previously a chef might have a huge advantage in this regard, since working in a kitchen is a really demanding occupation. He probably has excellent training in dealing with pressure and time constraints. Perhaps being a programmer is even a relief compared to being a chef!
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  Before I was a programmer I worked on an industrial site. > Programming isn't especially difficult in my opinion. Spoken like someone who is a programmer! haha
- Arisaka1 5y ago
  Aside the "programming isn't especially difficult" which I think has more to do with how experienced people are poor evaluators of the required skills to be good in something (akin to gamers saying "git gud" when it comes to Dark Souls games), you have a good realization: The faster you iterate the faster you move. When I was learning simple syntax I used to be afraid, almost allergic, to the idea that the code I'm executing will produce errors. I realized too late that the faster I get to the point of erroring and interpreting the errors thrown the better my progress. To put that in the kitchen perspective, it's the point where you're sampling the food that you're cooking to see if it needs salt, you forgot the onions, or it's boiling too fast.

rebelos 5y ago

A simple answer to your conundrum could be how he manages his cadence and deals with pressure. Programming isn't especially difficult in my opinion. In many cases, sheer throughput seems to have a lot more to do with success than raw talent. Someone who was previously a chef might have a huge advantage in this regard, since working in a kitchen is a really demanding occupation. He probably has excellent training in dealing with pressure and time constraints. Perhaps being a programmer is even a relief compared to being a chef!

tomlockwood 5y ago
Before I was a programmer I worked on an industrial site. > Programming isn't especially difficult in my opinion. Spoken like someone who is a programmer! haha
Arisaka1 5y ago
Aside the "programming isn't especially difficult" which I think has more to do with how experienced people are poor evaluators of the required skills to be good in something (akin to gamers saying "git gud" when it comes to Dark Souls games), you have a good realization: The faster you iterate the faster you move. When I was learning simple syntax I used to be afraid, almost allergic, to the idea that the code I'm executing will produce errors. I realized too late that the faster I get to the point of erroring and interpreting the errors thrown the better my progress. To put that in the kitchen perspective, it's the point where you're sampling the food that you're cooking to see if it needs salt, you forgot the onions, or it's boiling too fast.