Everything In Between

As I was reading my newsfeeds tonight, I came across several pieces of Python code supposedly written in one half of an hour. It took me half that much time just to read through the whole thing, and I still don’t really undertstand it all. In short, this left me feeling stupid.

(The code in question was Rui Carmo’s Netgrowl.py. Rui Carmo is someone I consider a guru, and someone I look up to even though my only interaction with the man is from reading his web site.)

Then, when I was done and thoroughly convinced that I’m an idiot and will never be able to do quality coding because of various still-valid reasons (like not experimenting enough, which is the big one), I came across this pargraph in an article from About Perl/PHP regarding how to be a programming guru:

If you want to be a guru then you’ll have to accept that no matter how much you know, you’ll never feel like you know anything at all. So try not to get bogged down if you start to feel inadequate. That feeling will never go away if you’re worth your salt, so don’t let it bring you down. Just focus on trying to learn as much as you can, and sharing your knowledge when you have the chance. That’s really the best that any of us will ever be able to do.

Now I don’t feel so bad, so I’m glad I stumbled upon that when I did.

Life has been pretty difficult for me lately. Between erratic sleep cycles, Danica’s wild mood swings, lack of work (and thus, income), and the frustrating obstacles I face when trying to learn all the computer stuff I’m interested in, I spend most of my days feeling like I’m just trying to “make do” the best I can. I really hate that feeling.