I suck at programming, but I love it. What should I do?

Too many people assume that the following is true:

          /----> Failure
Effort
          \----> Success

The reality is:

Effort \
             \
               Failure
                   /
                 /
           Failure
                     \
                       \
                      Failure
                       /
                     /
                   /
          SUCCESS!

In other words, failure is, in reality, the prerequisite to success.

Michael Jordan said: "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

You claim you suck at programming. I sucked once too. Now everyone looks up to me, but this is 33 years later. I wrote code and wrote more code and refactored even more code. I read other people's code. All this helps. Want a simple hint to help yourself? Read lots of open source code. Most open source code is pretty good, some is so-so, and some outright stinks. But read it, again and again and again.

Expose yourself to good code whenever you can. Find open source code in the language you'll be working in, and study it over and over. Join an open source project using the language you'll be working in (or want to work in) and contribute. If it sucks, you'll be told, often with recommendations on how to refactor, how to make it more pluggable, how to maximize dynamic loading, etc.

What worked for me was just continuing to write code. I was terrible, then horrible, then mediocre, then average, then decent, then good, and now I'm considered a guru. I didn't spring from the earth as God's gift to programming. I became good at what I do by doing it, over and over and over again, by being criticized, by taking those criticisms to heart, by refactoring repeatedly, and by learning to apply prior lessons regularly moving forward.

Good programmers are made, not born.

Read other related questions on Quora:

• I loved programming throughout college. Now when I have to write code for 12-16 hours in a day, I am not really that excited about programming any more. How can I make programming exciting again?
• I suck at math but want to get a CS degree because I love programming. What should I do? Are there any alternatives?
• Is it ever too late for someone to learn how to program?

Read more answers on Quora.

from Quora http://ift.tt/2hWzqGI