CS448 Software Development Capstone – Apprenticeship Patterns: “Be The Worst”

This week, I wanted to reflect on my habit of self-comparison in relation to my ability as a software developer. I’ve recently found myself preoccupied with how much I don’t know as compared to others in the computing world, both at and above my perceived level of competence. It feels awfully paralyzing comparing my present knowledge with the unfathomable set of things that I’m not even aware that I don’t know about. It’s becoming difficult to even take a break from ruminating about how far behind I feel, because Youtube and Instagram’s content generation algorithms keep delivering me videos with sensational titles like “5 Sorting Algorithms You NEED To Know”, or “Learn THIS Framework NOW”, or “Build THESE Projects To Establish Your Software Career”. It’s exhausting! Before I’ve even started, the amount and complexity of the work that I believe lies ahead of me makes me feel hopeless. How am I supposed to learn anything or get anything done if I think that my best is so far from acceptable, and to do better sounds so exhausting as to be impossible?

Spending so much time and energy spinning my wheels over this issue has me considering a counterintuitive approach. I can’t stay here in this weird superposition of feeling like I’ve been spending all my available energy on becoming the best programmer I can be, yet also feeling like I’m not working nearly hard enough to produce results that anybody would pay me for. That’s why the title of this pattern from chapter 4 of “Apprenticeship Patterns” caught my eye. I knew before that striving to be the best would be a fruitless and frustrating endeavor, but I didn’t foresee that striving to be my best could still lead to as much paralysis and burnout.

I’ve held myself back from contributing to open-source projects or joining online programming groups partly because I’ve been afraid that even if I try really hard, my best won’t be good enough. My rate of output will sputter, and my code will be full of mistakes, then I’ll lose the respect and patience of my team, and soon I’ll be drowning with no hope of rescue. That’s what my imagination says, anyway – it’s annoyingly silent about what my life would be like if I put some confidence into the skills I’ve learned and started believing that people wanted me on their team. This pattern, “Be The Worst”, asks the apprentice to embrace their role as the worst member of a team they are considering joining. From this place as the weakest member of the team, the apprentice can soak up knowledge and experience from their more capable team members and work their way up.

This pattern is one of those in this book that I think goes back to learning to let go of your own ego and presumed sense of competence. I need to be getting more programming experience outside of school, but because I am so petrified of people thinking that I’m incompetent, I never actually get anything done. It’s kind of terrifying to imagine myself as the weakest member of a team working on an important project, because then I imagine the situation where my being on the team has become a burden on the project despite my best efforts and intentions, and now everyone is mad at me when I’m trying so hard! I should have known better than to bite off more than I can chew! Extremely unproductive and exhausting attitude, I know. Maybe I’ll be able to wade my way out of this strange emotional swamp surrounding my sense of industry someday, but maybe more likely is that I’ll end up living that situation where I’m the worst on the team and I just cannot find it within me to do any better than I already am, and I’ll have to learn that regardless of all that, I’m still valuable.