Manage Your Expectations

A key to staying motivated is having realistic expectations. The first expectation you should set is that you will not be able to predict how fast or well you will learn anything. The skills necessary to be a great programmer are incredibly diverse, some will come naturally and others will not. It's simply not possible for you to predict how this will play out in your particular experience.

Software development is an incredibly complex skill. It requires communication, inter-personal skills, technical skills, contextual awareness, planning and accurate self-knowledge to name just a few. While any single one of these skills may not be complicated, the way they interact in a live development process is complicated and unpredictable.

No matter how smart you are, or how well you can learn other tasks, this inherent complexity will make it nearly impossible for you to predict when and how you will struggle. Embrace this! It's fun once you get used to it.

• Honest Self-Assessment
• A Better Way to Compare Yourself
• Growth Stages of a Developer
• Why This is SOOO Hard
• Learning to Code is Non-Linear
• Programming is Messy
• This Takes Time
• Early Professional Expectations