8 Things All Developers Have Dealt With Before

If you're a coder, then you'll understand.

By Raquel Guarino

Being a developer can be awesome, but even the best developers have had tough experiences. If you've been through any of these situations below, just know you aren't alone. The Help.com team chimed in to share which scenarios they've encountered personally.

Code Messing with Your Sleep

More than a few engineers on our team say they've had their sleep interrupted by a bright idea or bug fix mid-sleep. Backend Developer Ryan Mottley quipped, “The number of times I've thought up a solution right before falling asleep... LOL.”


Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

Our engineers are some of the best and brightest, but that doesn't mean they're invincible. For Sr. DevOps Engineer Pat Webster, imposter syndrome means 'becoming an expert about something over time and feeling like you’re not qualified for what you do for various reasons.'

Lead Frontend Engineer Chance Eakin agreed, 'The entire corpus of someone else's work is often a single click away. [That] makes comparison and judgment way too easy of a thing to practice.'

'Sprinkle the introvert anxiety on top,' Pat added, 'and a perfect storm is concocted.'


Getting Punked By Your Own Typo

This is a situation that most of our engineers have dealt with before. Jesus Ochoa, our QA Engineer, said it usually happens when you're 'working on something that theoretically should work, looking for solutions online, explaining the problem to somebody else, and in the middle of explaining it...you find the typo that's breaking everything.'

Trent Boyd, Frontend Engineer, chimed in with his own experience: “How about spending way too much time tracking down a bug only to find that you misspelled an object key? ruleIdruleIDrule_id'



Testing in the Wrong Environment

Related to the previous situation, Jesus added that this mistake is just as bad as the typo: 'Testing something, it doesn't work, and you realize you were just testing it in the wrong environment.'

It happens to the best of us.


The Harmony of Similar Syntax Highlighting

Not everyone codes the same way as you. That's why finding your twin flame is so special. There's nothing like finding someone whose syntax highlighting and set up sync up with yours, says Chance.


Constantly Getting Outsmarted by Your Peers

In this case, most of our staff said they often feel silly when discussing potential solutions with Help.com CTO Evan Lucas, who just has a way of finding simple answers to complex issues.

For example:

Jesus: 'Oh man, I have this incredible difficult thing I have to figure out. This is how far I've gotten.' *Explains not-great-looking solution*

Evan: 'What about this?' *Way simpler solution*

Jesus: '...Oh right. That makes sense.'


Tossing Good Code in the Can

Jesus said he's been personally affected by this one before. It usually happens when you're “working on something that you're pretty proud of, you solved a difficult issue to get it done, and then you hear, 'Turns out we're not going to need that after all.'”

Ryan said he's been there too. 'Hoo boy, if I had a dollar for that one.'


Losing It All in an Instant

Manny Pamintuan, Backend Engineer, shared this:

rm -rf *
'Oh no…'

git push -f
'Oh no…'

'Everyone has been bit by this,' explained Manny, 'And if not, it is just a matter of time. Like death and taxes, it comes for us all…'


Have you experienced any of this before? What would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments!


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