So let me premise this by saying that I have no idea if this is the correct place for a thread like this. I have been tinkering with Unity for over a year now with a very fundamental understanding of Javascript. I have recently made the decision that I will be putting forth the effort into releasing something small as a start to this career path I have chosen.
Now, I love coding and learning new things, but I have also discovered that I am extremely self-conscious about my skills as a developer as I have no schooling for it and am trying to teach myself. This wasnât holding me back much before, but since making my decision about putting forth this small game and committing to this as a goal; I have been having some panic attacks and other anxiety issues. Again, I wouldnât call it serious, but I was wondering how often this was a thing for newer devs, or veteran ones, and what they do in order to deal with it.
I personally have found a lot of relaxing music on Youtube by searching âDelta Wavesâ and listen to that while writing my codes and looking through Unity.
Iâve only gotten a panic attack once in PLDC and I just quietly sat through it until the Staff Sergeants teaching us let go outside for a recess. In my case, it wasnât caused by the subject matter they were talking about at all, but to sitting too long without taking sufficient brakes to get exercise and movement. Itâs not natural. The reason for your panic attack maybe different for you. Are you planning on creating an good original game or just going for the shock effect to try and make a quick buck out of notoriety?
Working alone you should have no anxiety unless itâs the game genre and what is being done in the game that is causing you upset. No one is forcing you to sit like I was forced to sit. If so, chose a write a game that doesnât upset you. No one sees your code with a compiled/interpreted product so you need only test that it work.
You can write complete non-sensible logic using 100% correct grammar and you can write philosophical masterpieces using atrocious grammar. And so it is with your coding. The only thing that matters is if the game you wrote is good.
I am making a simple incremental game to test my skills more or less⌠The panic attack came from a bug and not knowing how to figure it out and then the downwards spiral of thoughts such as âIf I canât figure this out, what am I even doing?â I am hyper critical of myself and things needing to be done right the first time⌠not as extreme as a perfectionist, bit similar?
I hear what you are saying, and sitting for a long period may have contributed to it as well, so breaks are more needed than I thought too.
Well I never had panic attack from coding, only from being forced to sit around too much. I did fear once I would be fired when I found out on one of my ledger programs that accountants put the minus sign on ledgers after the number, not before the number and that my mistake of putting the minus sign before the number caused about 5000 stores daily financial reports to fail to be generated. They thought if was funny since it was my 1st program and I kept my job though.
I imagine this is a common thing for new coders. Iâve been a developer for (mostly web, recently game) for 5 years now, and I still find myself overwhelmed and frustrated by things at times. Anecdote time!
I graduated from a community college with a 2 year degree in web development. Within a month, I had landed a paid internship at an agency (this was, however, the only place that responded to my application out of the 30 or so places I applied to). It didnât take long after starting there to get the feeling that I actually knew nothing about what I had to do for a living. I could barely read JavaScript! Meanwhile, my trainer/mentor was a self-taught kind of guy who seemed to be amazing at everything, regardless of having ever done it before.
It took a while, but I started to get it. You just do things before you understand them. Youâll write thousands and thousands of lines of shitty code. Youâll spend hours upon hours trying to debug the simplest problems (youâre missing a semicolon!). And thatâs how you get better. Thereâs no substitute for experience, after all.
Nobody is born knowing how to write code, or even having a clue how it works. Itâs actually the perfect definition of an unnatural act. You have to train your brain to think like a programmer. And like any training regimen, it takes time, practice, and patience. Otherwise known as experience. Sooner or later, youâll find yourself evaluating real world objects and defining classes that could define them. Youâll be able to write regular expressions without having to look them up. And youâll see a compiler error and know exactly where to look and what to look for. Youâll still have plenty of headaches and frustrating nights staring at the screen, but youâll be making progress. Thatâs one of the great things about our field; youâll always have room to improve.
Donât give up yet. And donât be self-conscious about your code. Everyone was a beginner at some point. Just donât be an ass, and most people will be happy to help.
It happens. Not just in coding. In every creative field. Iâve felt those moments. I tackled them by coming to terms with two truths: no one has any idea what they are doing and the only way to get better is by doing more work. Donât give up.
Just so you know, in college I would be in the commons with the terminals on Friday evenings way late learning how to code. You have to be persistent, interested, and want to do good work. And Iâve also seen other fellows in my class on those following Mondays slap and hit terminals in frustration, toss pencils at terminals, and dig through the recycle bin looking for discarded code they can reuse and patch. I estimate about 25% of those that graduated probably should have been expelled for ethics violations of one type or another, myself include as Iâd often hand out my code after completing it.
Coding ainât easy. Exhausting, draining, and frustrating but no need to have panic attacks. Save that if you are ever are sys admin or coder for important systems but youâd better learn anyway to remain calm and proceed logically, reservedly, and safely. Iâve watch my mates I was training have panic attacks but theyâd calm down when they seen I was laughing and tell them itâs only a bank computer - it doesnât feel pain and there are back ups. Now if I was administering a computerized traffic system maybe my heart would stomach would jump into my heart too.
If panic attacks are a persistiant thing it might be worth seeking profesional advice. There is only so much support we can give you from here.
My general advice when encountering difficult bugs is to step away from the problem. Go outside, get some fresh air, let you mind dwell on something else for a couple of hours. Youâll be amazed how much of a difference coming back fresh makes.
And remember, you are making a game. Itâs supposed to be fun. Noone is going to die if you canât fix the bug.
And since we are sharing acendotes, itâs an incredibally sobering experiance to walk down a corridor and count people you work with on a daily basis as casualties for a risk assessment. When you can name every one in the blast radius if you mess up, thatâs high pressure.
Iâm already convinced youâre better than 70% of college graduates. With the amount of theory, impractical experience and amount of work you can skip and still pass a course, itâs really up to the individual to actually do the work. I take easy classes and use them as independent studies to take the general topics in the course material and turn them into a big project. School has been a big waste of time so far (even taking the harder courses offered little that isnât a google away), so donât worry about it.
Except your business, because corporations are people! heh.
Wha, these days people get anxiety attacks from using computers for leisure? Wow. Just a few years ago people had anxiety attacks for real things like putting food on the table or keeping a job. Sorry, no sympathy.
You made a choice and didnât commit. Youâll always feel like a wet noodle until you accept that its your choice and job to do it so un-invert your gonads and get on with life. Much harder choices are coming.
Well, we are still in the touchy-feely era. Even businesses are allowed to discriminate at random if serving a particular customer would make them uncomfortable. cough Indiana cough
Again, itâs one of those American issues that you should let us handle internally and donât worry if it doesnât make sense. In Texas just the other day, a family believed their son to be possessed by a demon and put him on a 25 day fast. Surprise, he died of starvation, surprise, they took him to a church to be resurrected, surprise⌠it failed.
Let that thought distract you from this / bring you to realize that itâs the better side of things going on in our country right now lol.
Sounds like a new niche for specialized chiropractors!
Touchy Feely error? I donât think so. No with whatâs on television, in the news, and being published as game entertainment.
Donât confuse that a spoiled bratâs desire to manipulate empathy for selfish reasons with a touchy-feely empathy for others. Such behavior is crass, selfish, and manipulative.
So in that sense, Indiana has it right. I tend to not want to do business when the customers reveal they are purposely going to be trolling and threatening me the entire time Iâm serving them so they can âenjoyâ their superior moral societal position. You donât need to be Cotton Mather to be evil. Those âcrusadersâ with the news media in tow are no better than Cotton Mather.
Heaven forbid if I canât deny sale of weaponry to such touchy-feely people.
Geez, isnât life nice when you can take vengeance upon innocent people because you perceive yourself to be morally superior? Letâs just force people of the German nation and the State of Indiana to put on Hitler Halloween masks to make it easier for these crusading Cotton Mathers to continue their Inquisition and their attempts to found Gay Caliphates.
No thanks.
But if the OP author has experienced more than one panic attack in a year he should visit a doctor. If youâve had a real panic attack you wonât mistake it for being upset or frustrated. the best way to describe it is an overwhelming fear that you canât identify the cause of, so the best solution is to change the environment or what you are doing when they occur if that isnât irrational or unsafe.
Sad to see a thread about someone asking for advice on getting started in the industry turn into a platform for people to belittle and state hateful opinions.
Is having a panic attack over code an extreme reaction? Whoâs to say. I donât think itâs really about that, though. Itâs dealing with the struggle of doubting oneâs life decisions, which I think every single one of us has done at some point. And just because that person is living in the first world and not struggling to put food on their family doesnât mean they have no perspective or appreciation for the plight of others.
I am lightened up and I know the situation. I will not condone these Cotton Mather types by ignoring those seeking to go out of witch hunts to persecute the innocent.
