[nuancebydefault]

I find the story relating, though in a somewhat less dramatic sense.

Even after 20+ years of coding, there are very little moments of feeling on top and fully in control.

The other end -- feelings of "damn I don't get it, why won't it work" and the feeling of being overwhelmed by a big mess -- is quite more frequent.

The weird thing is that thinking "I'm no good at this" is an easy trap to fall into. Sometimes I feel software engineering must be one of the hardest jobs in terms of mental flexibility, constantly trying to figure things out and adapting to new frameworks and ever evolving ways of working.

But most probably there are plenty of other jobs with the same kind of complexities.

[convolvatron]

i feel very sad that this is a thing. in programming you should always have a feeling of absolute agency. there is no pile of crap deep enough you cant peek under. no bug you shouldn't be able to find, given enough time.

the problem should be that maybe it doesn't make sense to so do in a given context, not that you couldn't choose to do that.

[dmoy]

> there is no pile of crap deep enough you cant peek under. no bug you shouldn't be able to find,

I mean, yea, technically? But when the codebase gets very big, it can become intractable to chase every issue down.

> given enough time.

Okay sure. One often isn't given enough time though, if it's for a job.

[x86x87]

That's the trick. You should not chase every issue down. You should prioritize, but give one issue you should be able to chase it down and get to the bottom of it. So it's not about actually taking om the task of solving every issue, it's about the capability of solving any issue you deem worth solving.

[dmoy]

Yea that's fair

But I wouldn't describe it as a feeling of absolute agency. More like pressure-induced minor chaos