Recently a friend started working on a WordPress plugin. The plugin was scratching an itch, counting the words in a collection of posts and rendering the count in a widget, as an incentive to post regularly. In the process of building the plugin she tweeted quite a bit, about successes, struggles, and frustrations. At one point I sent her some encouragement:
She was right, I hadn’t seen her code. I’d never seen any of her code. At that point I didn’t know if she could code at all. But I knew she was doing awesome. How?
I could tell from her tweets that she was struggling with things, doing research, overcoming those things, and moving on. Anyone who can complete that process is essentially unstoppable as a developer. That process also works in any other walk of life.
Do you have what it takes to be a WordPress developer? Or any kind of developer? Or anything else in life? If you can confront your struggles head on, find a solution, and move on, you will be unstoppable.
The struggle that I think we all face in open source is the constant fight with ourselves on if our code is good enough. In reality, it’s always good enough, but can always be improved. I remember Rami telling me long ago that if I look back at my code that I wrote a year ago and say “wow, why in the hell did I do it like this?”, then I’m doing something right.
Being a good developer isn’t about writing the world’s best code; it’s about creating something and constantly improving your skills.
I love every bit of this. So true!
Topher. You made me cry. Thanks for your kind words! You’re an amazing person and friend!
Well, I’m glad it made your day brighter, but thank YOU for giving me such a perfect example of the right stuff. You really nailed it, I know you can do anything.