4 ms·

Nah, I think your expectations are wrong. No matter how good you are, nobody is good enough to port an API like you are saying it, by memorising or thinking 9

Nah, I think your expectations are wrong. No matter how good you are, nobody is good enough to port an API like you are saying it, by memorising or thinking 9 levels deep. Humans aren't designed for this kind of tasks. Instead, you should take steps to understand the parts that compromise the abstractions that make up that API and implement it. Also have good test coverage from both sides, so you make sure you are implemented something that resembles more like a spec.

dgb23 4y ago
There's a lot of good, generic advice in this thread, but this is I think the right answer. I specifically scanned for one like this. What OP is trying to do is quite literally impossible. Not even the best chess players in the world can hold such a big (decision) tree in their heads _at once_. And they might be the most extreme data point we have on this matter. The way we humans compute needs to be supported by breaking stuff apart and focus on few things at a time on one side, and by abstraction on the other side. Iterating on smaller problems and generalizing the big picture along the way. Think forest & trees metaphor, or the 7 +/- 2 problem. Of course as we get older our ability to completely emerge into one task and put all our energy into it generally weakens for a variety of reasons. But there's enough evidence to support the idea that regularly challenging our cognitive ability keeps us sharp and maintains or improves our ability to learn and tackle new things. What we can't do however is fight our natural limitations and OP seems to try just that. Additionally, and this might be just as important, this seems to be a very tedious and boring task. The worst tasks are the ones that require a lot of mental effort while also being incredibly boring. It's hard to find a high state of motivation and focus, which contributes to the issue.
- elmolino89 4y ago
  I second that. Without taking notes/diagramming no mere mortal can handle nested 9 levels just in the brain. And somehow I doubt that the OP colleagues are doing just that either. The diff between people being stuck and progressing is often how much and how smart they writings things down. My suggestion would be to try to tackle the low hanging fruits first: find the parts of the lowest complexity, try to understand these and get the simplest things done first. This will also restore your confidence.

dgb23 4y ago

There's a lot of good, generic advice in this thread, but this is I think the right answer. I specifically scanned for one like this. What OP is trying to do is quite literally impossible. Not even the best chess players in the world can hold such a big (decision) tree in their heads _at once_. And they might be the most extreme data point we have on this matter. The way we humans compute needs to be supported by breaking stuff apart and focus on few things at a time on one side, and by abstraction on the other side. Iterating on smaller problems and generalizing the big picture along the way. Think forest & trees metaphor, or the 7 +/- 2 problem. Of course as we get older our ability to completely emerge into one task and put all our energy into it generally weakens for a variety of reasons. But there's enough evidence to support the idea that regularly challenging our cognitive ability keeps us sharp and maintains or improves our ability to learn and tackle new things. What we can't do however is fight our natural limitations and OP seems to try just that. Additionally, and this might be just as important, this seems to be a very tedious and boring task. The worst tasks are the ones that require a lot of mental effort while also being incredibly boring. It's hard to find a high state of motivation and focus, which contributes to the issue.

elmolino89 4y ago
I second that. Without taking notes/diagramming no mere mortal can handle nested 9 levels just in the brain. And somehow I doubt that the OP colleagues are doing just that either. The diff between people being stuck and progressing is often how much and how smart they writings things down. My suggestion would be to try to tackle the low hanging fruits first: find the parts of the lowest complexity, try to understand these and get the simplest things done first. This will also restore your confidence.