All of the known and unknown traps in successful programming

Question

#Communities are defined by their members.
The legacy of super competitive community is a group of very opinionated—and probably correct—people. It is a community that primarily grows when approached by people that hold the same opinions. That is a limited community. In a competitive community, the idea of discovery lies solely at the top end of the excellence spectrum. Only the people that are winning are discovering new things. Everyone else is just trying to keep up.

The legacy of an inspired community is diversity in opinion and the ease of entry through communal acceptance. Inspired communities have discovery at every level of knowledge. Beginners, experts and everyone in between are all discovering new things on a daily basis. CodePen is one of these places. Hurrah!

I have decided to put my thoughts on paper and in result you will not do the same mistakes I did. These are all in your mind but they are all traps that will make your process short,

Now unfortunately the character limit is waaaaay too short to fit it in here so I will tag a couple of comments with a #hashtag and a number for you to review down below,

I hope you'll find this helpful.

Answer 1

#1

#Comparison kills
For the first 20 years of my life, I lived a life of comparison. I felt surpassed in pretty much every aspect of my life whether it was athletically, academically, or creatively. Comparison typically leads to pride or discouragement rather than inspiration. For me, comparison led straight down a trail of discouragement to the point where I just gave up trying things. I dropped out of school, joined a band, worked in a horse barn. It wasn’t until I became prideful that I started trying things again. I didn’t know any devs, which meant anything I coded became the “coolest thing in the world” to the people in my life. That sort of feedback fueled my pride which became the polar opposite form of comparison. I had to flush that pride from my system before I was able to be inspired.

Don’t get me wrong, comparison can certainly be valuable if you want to get a sense for where you stand, but if you aren’t careful, it nearly always takes that next step into irrational and insecure judgment of yourself and others.

#Hardcoding “success”
When you compare yourself to others, you can easily find yourself desiring to be an amalgamation of people you find “successful”. Maybe I want a little bit of Chris Coyier’s enthusiasm for CSS mashed with some of Sarah Drasner’s illustrative chops accompanied by a side of Gregor Adams fractal freakiness topped with a Rach Smith GSAP bonanza garnish. Being inspired by others is undoubtedly a good thing. However, building this “dream machine” cyborg of talent is inherently shortsighted because you are yourself, not other people. You are valuable and you have plenty to offer. Often times focusing on the works of others can get in the way of finding your own strengths. Be inspired, but don’t stunt your own growth.

To be continued....

Answer 2

#2

This desire to be everything is also unrealistic because you’re essentially striving to be an all-star team of developers and you are a single person. It is hard enough to stay up to date with a single specialty, let alone a cornucopia of them.

Hardcoding success is also suffocating because you have limited your possibility for lateral growth and are focused on only one outcome. If you are the sort of person that knows exactly what they need to be in five years, you’re lucky. Chances are you are going to grow out of your current idea of “success” and find a new one that looks a lot more like you and makes a heck of a lot more sense later on.

#Giving up sucks
After constructing this nebulous idea of “success” through comparison you will almost immediately find the task of achieving it to be impossible. You’ll take your first step in that direction and become overwhelmed and give up. It is natural for excellence to be this seemingly unattainable, but chances are you aren’t thinking about that. Chances are you are thinking about how much you suck. Don’t be burdened by lofty goals, let them sit in the background in a malleable state.

The primary reason I get overwhelmed and give up is a byproduct of competition.

To be continued...

Answer 3

#3

#COMPETITION VS. INSPIRATION

Competition can have immediate rewards
When you are driven by competition, you will find bursts of rapid growth and acceleration. You will stay up working for 20 hours straight to get ahead. Of course this will naturally yield progress. The danger of competition is that it gives you a taste for success and then pairs that idea of success with being the best. Living in that territory is vicious, and will burn you out before you can say tadaa!

There is nothing wrong with desiring excellence, but that is a drastically different pursuit than getting ahead of other people. This problem is most easily seen in how you handle not being the best. I hate to break it to you, but not being the best will happen eventually if not immediately. If you are concerned with being the best, realizing you aren’t is quite scary. You start desperately grasping at things trying to get ahead, you fail harder, and you feel terrible. This is a great way to turn striving for excellence into crippling insecurity.

#How you value yourself determines how you value others.
If you are super competitive, you will view others as competition. In addition to that being intimidating for others, you will find yourself actively hoping for the failure of others in order to maintain an elevated sense of self. If others view themselves as uncompetitive, they view your competitiveness as overwhelming and will get discouraged. Would you rather have a community of ten inspired devs or a community of two competitive devs and eight discouraged ones? Here’s a hint: you thrive in one and unravel in the other.

Thank you, T

Answer 4

Well spoken

Answer 5

Wow. Nice. :)

Answer 6

nice