The rewards from struggling to learn something

[This was originally posted at http://timstall.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com/the_rewards_from_struggling_to_learn_something.htm]

In the movie Kingdom of Heaven, a knight, Godfrey de Ibelin, is instructing his son, Balian, about a sacred oath. At the very end, Godfrey slaps his son in the face and says "and that is so you will remember it [the oath]." The thinking is that people remember hardships. We remember when we've been wronged, certainly when someone slaps us in the face, and when we struggle to figure something out. The same thing applies to overcoming technical problems. When the computer "slaps you" in the face, you remember it. Maybe it's spending 5 hours for one line of code, redoing a huge component, or just throwing up your hands in despair, only to be rescued by an explanation from another developer. There's something about the struggle that really makes a lesson sink in.

 

Sure, of course there's no benefit to make something unnecessarily complex. Sometimes a technology is too new and unstable, and it's not worth the struggle yet. However, most work, will always require you to push through. Here are several benefits for pushing through the struggle to learn something:

• It teaches you to be the one who breaks new ground, especially for new or unsolved problems. As every new wave of technology comes out, all the cutting-edge developers (the MVPs, authors, speakers, top bloggers, architects, etc...) are working overtime to digest it, expand their brains, and work through the kinks. It is a constant struggle.

• It makes you truly understand the topic. If you just passively ask, you'll forget. If you actively figure it out yourself, re-deriving the algorithm or writing the code, then you'll get it.

• It makes you appreciate how hard it is for those "experts" to have the answers. Sure, some people are just smart and tough concepts come naturally for them. But most of these people are burning the midnight oil. The only reason that your local star can explain off the top of her head why you'll have a multi-threading error in your instance method is because she probably spent hours (when no one was watching) suffering through multi-threading bugs herself. The expert may be able to answer your question in 10 seconds - but that's only because they spent hours coincidentally studying it before hand. The coworker who goes around trivializing others' work ("Oh, that's just scaling out the database to multiple servers") is usually the one who's never had to do it themselves. They've seen others do it, so they know it's possible - but they think it's just another standard task.

• It spares you from wasting other people's time. Someone who always just asks other people the moment an issue comes up is wasting their co-workers time. If you haven't spent at least 1 minute googling it, you don't deserve to know it. Sure you can confirm your findings with others, but at least take a stab yourself. It reminds me when in a computer science class, a student posted to the forums asking "will 'int i = null' compile? " Obviously, they could have just figured that out for themselves by typing it in the IDE and trying - and it would have been a lot faster too.

• It encourages you to extend grace to others. Developer estimates are notoriously inaccurate. Often this is because developers come across an unexpected problem. If you're that developer, and you get burned yourself, then you understand what it's like when it happens to others, and you can be empathetic in a way that builds the team chemistry.

• It gives you experience with which to make your own code simpler for others. If you lost half your day tracking down a string case-sensitive error, you'll be sure to write your own code to be string-insensitive where applicable. Suffering at the hands of a poorly written component can guide you on what to do better.

• It's inevitable, so get used to it. The goal of a developer is to solve technical problems, and problems often entail a struggle.

Think of it like you're training for a marathon. Every struggle is a training session that builds up your perseverance, your endurance, and your respect for your coworkers.

 

I realize in today's "give it to me now" world, the whole point is to avoid struggling. And of course there's no benefit to struggle just for the sake of struggling. However, nothing in life - when you're actually the one doing it - is every just simple. People who do practical house or yard work see this all the time. "It's just tearing down the wallpaper" becomes an eight hour ordeal as you find yourself needing to steam the paper, tear it off shred by shred, scrape off the adhesive, and plaster in the gashes.

 

There's an old saying: "Anything worth having is worth fighting for." Without the guts to push through problem areas, you'll find yourself surrendering to every problem - and because the whole point of development is to constantly solve problems, that will forever block you from getting very far.