Getting efficient (not proficient, just efficient) at programming has a lot to do with experience and smoothing out all those errors from past scars. If it mak

Getting efficient (not proficient, just efficient) at programming has a lot to do with experience and smoothing out all those errors from past scars. If it makes you feel any better, that slow grindy Google-heavy progress is normal for any programmer working in an environment they aren't experienced in. Toss a senior backend guy into frontend JS and CSS. Watch him rend his clothes to shreds. (CSS is fucking evil btw.) You slowly get better/quicker at learning new things, but nobody really walks into something different and just instantly knows how to do everything. The most important skills you can develop for ameliorating this is getting ace at debugging and static analysis. Both are close to my primary knack, above and beyond anything else I do as a programmer. I'm the go-to guy for my team whenever an intractable error/issue comes up. It is with great pleasure that I've been told this is Rich Hickey's knack as well, although I sincerely doubt I'll be anywhere near that good in the next 20 years.