I’ve spent most of my day caught between anger, anxiety, and despair. One single command—something that should have been trivial: console.log("CARTID", cartId)
And yet, for hours, it returned nothing but the wrong value. It didn’t care how elegantly my frontend handled the logic. It ignored my careful upgrades. It had no sympathy for my deteriorating mental health. Always, the wrong value.
Let’s say the variable name was different. Let’s even assume you’re using something more robust than a console.log. Maybe you’re a more brilliant coder than I am. But I’m 100% sure you’ve been in a similar situation.
If not, drop me an email. I might have some work for you.
We all know that writing code swings between feeling god-like when a few lines work seamlessly and feeling like an absolute fool when, no matter what we try, we get stuck.
And boy, have I been stuck plenty of times in my life.
Something I’ve learned over time is that getting stuck isn’t a sign of incompetence (not necessarily, at least). It’s just part of the process. It’s as much a stage of crafting good code as planning, implementing, and testing. It’s a rite of passage, proof that you’re pushing the boundaries of what you know and what you’re trying to achieve.
Did it used to hit my ego hard? Absolutely. I used to see struggling as a sign of weakness. Every time something wasn’t smooth sailing, I felt exposed—as if my entire reputation as a developer was hanging on this one broken line of code. Panic attacks, self-doubt, frustration.
The biggest mistake I made? Not asking for help.
It sounds obvious. If you’re stuck, ask for help. Get a second opinion. Explain the issue to someone else. I can’t count how many times I’ve found the root of my problem just by talking it through. But when you tie your self-worth to your ability to solve problems alone, asking for help feels impossible. I was scared of looking incompetent, of bothering more experienced developers, of revealing weakness.
How did I get over this? Well—get over is a strong phrase. I still bang my head against the wall for a while. I still have a minor freak-out before reaching out. But I’ve come to accept that struggling is necessary. I don’t believe in asking for help immediately every time I hit a roadblock. Letting my brain sweat for a bit has done wonders for my growth.
Another trick that works wonders for me? Walking.
I close my laptop, put on my shoes, and head out with no destination, no headphones—just me and the world around me. The chill in the air, the warmth of the sun, the little details I usually ignore. This simple act resets my brain. I return to my desk 30 minutes later feeling like a different developer. Thoughts flow more clearly. Solutions emerge more naturally. I’m sure there’s research explaining why this works, but I don’t need to understand it. I just know it does.
Back to my console.log. Did a walk solve my issue? No. But—there’s always a but. Coming back, I saw the flow differently and noticed an edge case I had completely misunderstood. This time, the problem wasn’t in my code—it was in a part of the application I hadn’t built, something I didn’t fully understand. And guess what? The person who did build it was just a Slack message away. I asked for help, we worked through it together, and we solved it.
This is one of the most trivial yet fundamental patterns in our work as developers. We get stuck. We learn. We adapt. But for me, each of these moments is more than just debugging—it’s a small personal victory. Fear, insecurity, social anxiety—I’ve chipped away at all of them by knowing myself better and finding a team that supports me. I’ve never once felt judged by my current team, and that’s something I’ll never take for granted.
What a relief when you finally make progress.
Now, time to close this task… and inevitably get stuck again.