Good luck! I remember there have periodically been posts on show HN for free logos/branding, perhaps some google-fu can get you in the right direction?
64 karma · joined February 8, 2017
In high school I didn't always get along with the old man so I hadn't wanted to be a programmer honestly. But one time I had to do some VB with MS Excel for class and found it to be a lot of fun! I knew that it was kind of 'fake' boring programming compared to the stuff programmers do on the day to day, so I decided to learn real programming and now here I am almost 10 years later.
I think that you'll need to find a way to incorporate programming into some other domain that they fancy rather than trying to just introduce them to programming for the sake of it.
It seems to me that it auto closes the PRs that someone tries to open if the PR threshold is met? Does it do that to issues too? I think I wouldn't want a limit on issues personally.
I like the idea of the tool though!
"Why am I doing this thing I'm anxious about?"
If its because I have to for adult reasons or some other goal and there's no better alternative, then I just suck it up and do it, it's not gonna get any easier.
If its because of societal expectations I ask myself "Do I care about conforming to this societal expectation? What will it cost me if I don't?" and then I go from there. If I truly don't care about it, but it will cause issues later, like flaking on an event and then friends won't invite me if I do it too much, then I'll decide that the cost outweighs the amount I don't care.
In the end, it all comes down to identifying the 'why' for me and then doing a cost-benefit analysis of the tradeoffs of: 'how much do I care?', 'what is the cost of not doing it in terms of money, stress, or societal expectations?', and 'is there a different option, if so how do the costs compare?'.
In your case, I feel that you are doing this because you think you need to get better and all these other people know things you don't, and you don't want to look stupid. You need to decide if you even care on all that.
I had the desire to learn and get better cause I always felt behind before as well. I don't know if it quite manifested as learning anxiety, but I had some things that helped me. I knew that while these people knew more about Mathematics or more classical computer science things, I had other things they didn't such as knowledge of foreign languages and cultures, or I wrote better code from a readability/maintenance standpoint. I'm sure you have some other piece of knowledge they don't even if its something like world history. It may not seem useful or applicable but every piece of knowledge can be applied in some other context some way, even if its just realizing that the problems are similar so you know to look up how it was solved previously in a different domain.
So step one is stop comparing to them. Step two is to sit back and decide if you actually want to be learning these things, and why. Step three is deciding which things are going to be the most immediately applicable, and if you need to learn something first to learn it, then do so(learning algebra to learn calculus). Step four is moving on to the next thing after you have that to a good enough base knowledge.
You don't have to be an expert in any fields here. Just get to a point where you can easily learn more. I imagine you can most likely do two new tech domains at once as long as they aren't too similar, but don't bite off too much. Just do at least a little bit of study a day. Even some more boring technical books that are 300 or so pages can be tackled in a month at 10 pages a day! But don't stick too hard and fast to things like that. It might be easier to do a 5 page chapter now, and then a 15 page chapter the next day. Stopping points like that help. Also if you read too much you could affect retention.
Look into some things about learning techniques such as spaced repetition stuff like Anki or Supermemo. Things like that pay dividends by making you spend less time overall and you won't need to learn the same thing twice if you keep up with it. Gaps in studying can be bad cause you don't progress but you also regress at the same time, you can see that after semester breaks in school when you go to the next level of class and everyone forgot half the previous semester. The worst thing than a gap in studying is a longer gap. A one or two day gap sometimes is no issue really but a month is, and three months is worse! Habits make perfect. Some analogical advice from my time as a recovering alcoholic would be this:
"Stumbling and falling down looks dumb in front of everyone and it's embarrassing and it sucks. No one is denying that. However, not getting up and just continuing to lie on the floor looks even dumber, and you'll be in people's way. Get up and keep on walking and eventually you'll learn how to not stumble anymore, or if nothing else most of your time at least won't be spent on the floor."
I know this is a lot of stuff to think about and so I'll make a quick little TL;DR.
1. Figure out the 'why' and if its worth doing 2. Figure out if there's a better way 3. Figure out the best way to do it
I use to be quite an alcoholic(about 14-16 beers or .5 to .75 liters of whisky) and it caused me quite a few problems in my life. A few months ago for my two year sober-versary, I wrote a little bit about it, and alcohol culture in development.
https://dev.to/samuraiseoul/alcohol-and-developer-culture-19...
Location: Kansas City, MO wanting to move to Seattle, WA area
Remote: Both
Willing to relocate: Maybe
Technologies: Java, PHP, Kotlin, Javascript, Vue, Selenium
Résumé/CV: http://www.scottlavigne.com/_assets/resume.pdf
Email: scottlavigne28@gmail.com
There's the common quote that I hear people say "If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room." If you always follow that, you'll always feel like you're the dumbest, and no one will ever learn anything that you know. There's some other problems with that quote such as if everyone followed that, we'd all be chasing each other from room to room and the smartest person on the planet would have some issues, but alas, that's not relevant.
Going and mentoring people, or finding a company where you didn't start in as the lowest rung, will help you a lot. When you stay in the company you started in, as long as you're there you will wonder if you are skilled, or if you just have domain knowledge that makes you look more skilled than someone who just joined. Mentoring and teaching will help you realize just how far you've come, and the people who you teach will look to you like you look to those people who make you feel dumb and not good enough. I don't mean that in a negative way, they will respect your skills and look to you for advice, just like the people you look to now.
As for having trouble making the same insights and connections, that's just per the territory. Perhaps you're a developer who is self taught, or went through a boot camp, and working in a place that gets pretty computer science level (ML, fancy math and algorithms, NLP, ect). These people have lots of experience in these things that you don't, and so they make the connections, and you can learn to get there but it will take a long time. It's useful stuff, but maybe switching to a less intense job for a bit will help on that. Or maybe they know more about the current industry you're in, someone making medical study tracking software will do better if they have conducted a study before for example.
Lastly just straight up be honest and maybe ask them how they made that insight. Tell them that you don't understand how they got from point A to point D, and you can see if there's some thought process you can learn from them, or if the difference is just a large amount of background knowledge.
Truly lastly though, I will also say that consuming alcohol often can really slow your brain down, and just in case this is relevant, consider looking into cutting back safely with your doctor's advice. My mind has doubled in sharpness and speed of making those kind of connections since I got sober almost 2 years ago and also gave up smoking. So also talk to your doctor and be sure there's nothing physical that is actually causing your mental thought processes to falter and sabotage your confidence.