Shawn’s perspective is great. Like chess players or golfers, there is (almost) always someone better, but practice improves our ability. Programming takes practice, but it gets more satisfying the more you do of it.

My first programming language was Fortran, but I couldn’t get my first program to compile! I never did. I switched to something easier, Basic. Then went back to Fortran successfully. I toyed with programming for years before deciding on it as a career.

Ten years from my first attempts I was a good programmer doing really interesting things.

In twenty years I was architecting distributed systems for IBM’s new AIX operating systems.

In thirty years I was chief scientist at a very successful software company.

Key to my success was to keep learning from people smarter than me by reading, taking classes, and practice doing hard things. Although it has now been fifty years, I still love programming.

[A bit OT] Brilliantly said. I always enjoy reading encouraging statements like these; especially in response to self doubt.