I have to say that since starting I’ve had a lot less support than I was expecting and I’ll be given something to do but very sparse direction. I’ll go away and do my best and usually be told that based on the little guidance I have done good but maybe we could do it this way or that way, which is great as that’s how we learn right?
Also, preface saying that I’m working on a Typescript React app alone as the others have other projects.
So queue today. I’ve got a todo list of questions about my implementation and things I could do better, which they like my diligence of keeping track. Well I was working on a component and like an idiot I hard coded a lot of the data that is subject to change if say they add a new let’s say PetType. So the SE comes over, tears my code to shreds and like a wizard makes it work even better with only dynamic use of data.
I don’t mind the tearing my code to shreds as again it’s a learning experience but my self esteem has dropped off a cliff.
I got my first programming job in 1996. I still have days like this.
Today, I had a conversation with my boss about an apprentice in our team. Our senior front-end dev left a few months ago, and the apprentice has had to take on a lot of work with little guidance. Our team is very full of back-end devs with no front-end experience. During this conversation, we described our apprentice as “extremely capable but lacking experience”, and discussed the best way of getting him more experience. The conclusion we came to is that there is no shortcut here, but having good guidance from senior devs can help somewhat.
What I’m trying say here is that what you’re describing is absolutely normal, and based on what you’ve said, you’re doing fine. You have a little imposter syndrome, which seems worse than it is because of your genuine lack of experience… that experience will come with time, and days like today are the days where you learn a load from your mistakes. You’ll probably not hard-code things like that in future, and today you gained a tiny bit of that experience that you need - well done!
