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You know, I feel like the perfect person to answer this. I used to be a sysadmin, then a devops engineer, then a "VP of Infrastructure", and I'm currently doing some hands on work again as a "lead devops engineer". Like you, I used to be frustrated at my inability to program, and I felt like I could never make sense of any of it. I spent years in my earlier career sticking to "sysadmin things" because of that limitation. Eventually, as automation hit the industry, I started writing more and more ruby code (we were Puppet users) and eventually I took a full time job for a year writing ruby code. It was never an inability, it was always a confidence thing. I was scared to try and fail. By taking a full time position as a developer I -had- to succeed, and I like to think I did. I found it's not nearly as hard as I imagined, and the fact I did not have sysadmin duties competing made a HUGE difference. I was able to dedicate all day to what I was doing, not fit it into the corners of my life. From what you wrote above, it's pretty clear that your personality woes (anxiety probably is the big one here) is convincing you that you can't do this. I wasted years convinced that it was "too hard", but in reality I just didn't have the motivation to push through my discomfort. I don't actually write a lot of code these days, but I'm no longer afraid to pick up some code and modify it if I need to because I know it's just a matter of being patient and figuring things out as I go. |