Struggling

Written on: 2025-05-29. Last updated on: 2025-06-23.

Every time that I get stuck in a task of my job as a Software Developer I ask myself the same question: Am I good enough to do my job? Or, do I like what I do in my job? Because sometimes I feel that I'm struggling and there is not joy. I mean, many of us are feeling the same way but I want to understand why I feel this way to change it.

I have known for years but just recently I've started understanding something so obvious but that I didn't see clear before: other people came from other fields and learn to program to solve their own problems and don't over think about it. Us, being Software Developers or Software Enginners by career, we have a different approach. We learn to solve all kind of problems using computers throught different programming languages and technologies and methodologies. But being that generalists we often feel that some things don't connect and over think about it. We should learn to make it simple. At least I should learn to do that.

And then I've read the most interesting story for this particular case. A post from Lexi talking about her experience with programming and programming languages design. That made me remember that sometimes you've start doing one thing and then you change your career partially or totally.

I also believe in this way of learning things you don't rush things. You do it properly, you learn to learn it and learn from your mistakes.

I've been programming for years now. But I think I've doing it wrong. I don't want to look back to the start of my career and think I haven't done anything but also I think I need to correct all my bad habits programming and designing programs.

Things I'm doing to be a better software developer

In not particular order:

  • Learning C, because I want to learn the basic of the basic.
  • (Re)learning SQL. If you don't know SQL you can't make Software for the Web.
  • (Re)learning Git. There are a lot of tricks I want to learn.
  • Learning algorithms, data structures (DSA) and pattern designs.
  • Learning Haskell, because it's the most beautiful syntax to write programs
  • Learning Rust, because I want to write fast programs
  • Learning all the things I don't know about CSS. Practice, practice and practice.
  • (Re)learning JavaScript and WebAPIs and learning TypeScript since its foundations.
  • Building tiny projects, uploading them to GitHub and GitLab. Build them in public if possible.
  • Write more blog posts.
  • Give more talks.
  • Contribute to the Open Source movement.

Writing Toy Software is joy

I really love this article and although I don't have that many ambitions nor knowledge things like those projects I have my own list of things I want to build