Programming

The machine does exactly what you tell it to. That's the agony and the ecstasy. All problems in computer science are breaking goals down into things you can do, and then describing them correctly so that they actually happen. The former is what makes programmers feel like geniuses. The latter is what makes programmers feel like complete idiots... over and over and over.

Coordinate systems are my arch-nemesis. I try converting from one to another by reasoning through the steps, and get complete nonsense. Then I see where I had something backwards, and fix it, and get even worse nonsense.

What determines if someone is cut out for programming is whether they can say "fuck it" and try every possible combination of steps until something looks right, and then build up from that until nearly everything looks right. It's like a puzzle game created by your own stupidity. You occasionally have to admit you have no goddamn idea why something works, even though the whole project depends on it, and you're the one that wrote it. You can't worry about it. You'll go crazy. Just solve the problem.

This is a cult that talks to rubber ducks and collects mantras that contradict one another. Because it works. You don't have to feel smart. You just have to make the thing do the thing, and convince yourself that it's not-doing-it because of something you did. If you find yourself staring at six lines of code and repeating "this should work!" until you realize it should be five lines of code - that's not being too dumb to be a programmer. That's what being a programmer is.