An open letter to my imposter syndrome

Dear Imposter Syndrome,

I know you’ve been there in the past and I’m sure you’ll be around in the future but right now I need you to calm down. As I write this, I’ve stuck on a track called ‘I Can’ by Nas and I’m looping this seven ways to Sunday. Nas said: “I know I can, be what I wanna be, if I work hard at it, I'll be where I wanna be.” Typically, not to my taste, but it’s fueling the fire of counterargument against you.

You argue, that I’m not good enough because you’ve seen people that appear to be breezing through the Command Shift bootcamp. You’ve seen people with incredible social media accounts that display their progress. Then, you tell me I’m stupid because I’m not learning quickly enough.

Well, Imposter Syndrome, I won’t make this easy for you. If you want to take me down, you’re going to need to come up with something new because I had enough of the sewage your selling.

It’s about damn time that I listened to my own advice because I am running my own race. I. Am. A. Developer. As much as you hate to hear this, I’ve come too far to give up now. You’ve been whizzing about in my head like a tiny spaceship, which is distracting. Could you stay still for a minute? Because I am talking! My name’s Rob and I’m a developer!

I present to you the following evidence in the case against your claim.

You recently attended a Command Shift lecture on an introduction to Sequelize. Sequelize is a tool or library that allows developers to interact with relational databases using TypeScript or Node.js. simplifies database operations and provides a consistent way to interact with different types of databases. You contributed to the breakout session despite the imposter syndrome you’ve been feeling. Your track progress might be a bit slow but it's comforting to know you can bring something to the table in the mob programming sessions. Notably, setting up a Docker container from the command line.

docker run --name project -p 5432:5432 -e P0STGRES_PASSWORD=password -d postgress

This command creates a new Docker container named "project" that runs a PostgreSQL database server. The command specifies several options:

• "-p 5432:5432" maps port 5432 in the container (which is the default port used by PostgreSQL) to port 5432 on the host machine. This allows applications running on the host machine to connect to the PostgreSQL server running inside the container.

• "-e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password" sets an environment variable named "POSTGRES_PASSWORD" to the value "password". This sets the password that will be required to access the PostgreSQL server.

• "-d postgres" specifies that the container should use the "postgres" image from the Docker Hub registry. This image contains a pre-configured installation of PostgreSQL.

This command creates a new Docker container running PostgreSQL with port forwarding and password protection enabled. This is a common way to run a database server in a development or testing environment.

Our next item relates to the progress that can be seen while faced with said Imposter Syndrome. You had a go at the practice on my own. You set up the project, created the container and connected to the server in pgADmin and it felt like a win. However, you are stuck on a reference error and can't figure it out yet but you have sent your code for review.

Ok, let's wrap this up in a nice little bow now because talking about myself in the third person is confusing me now, and maybe you. I think I will always have Imposter Syndrome but the key for me is how I manage it. Am I too stupid to get this? Why can’t I understand this when others seem to get it so quickly? Will I ever get employed as a junior developer or am I living in a fantasy world? These are all questions that bubble away under the surface. I just have to keep moving forward, or failing forward as some people describe it. In contrast, here are a few things that have made me happy in the past two weeks.

I'm happy about my GitHub cheat sheet. At the start of the course, I struggled to get to grips with speaking to GitHub from the command line, so I decided I'd make my own documentation to help me understand it. Since then I haven't had a major setback in that area. I offered it up to a member of my cohort earlier today and they said it's a "good resource with some good tips." That's always nice to hear.

Another thing I’m happy about is my podcast being sampled in the Command Shift marketing material. That’s awesome! Thanks again to Mike Brewer , Chris Edwards and Anthony Moran for joining me on this episode. It's been a whirlwind since we recorded this and I'm confident the next one will be insightful too. Listen to the full episode here.

Finally, there was something else that helped me battle imposter syndrome and that Tarndeep Virdi did. Tarndeep shared the advice/tip that I mentioned to our cohort at the start of our course and offered it to bootcamp newbie Camilla Priest-Stephens. It's an app called Responsively, that lets you see how your code looks on a variety of devices all at once when your building responsive layouts. Plus, you can see these updates in real-time if you have VS Code set to autosave and the URL field has your local host path in. I have to tell my inner monologue that, logically, how can I be an imposter, if people are taking my advice to help them code? I'm going to cling to that rationale, I hope. Have to take my own advice a bit more.

In conclusion, I did make progress on the track despite feeling like a fraud and an imposter. Kyle at WebDevSimplified helped solidify some of the basic concepts including GET and POST. I'm claiming 'CTRL + C' as a small victory for closing the server in the terminal. How did I ever manage without this shortcut? Oh, and the code I wrote to automatically update the server is a victory. Looking at you "nodemon index.js".

I've gotten into the good habit of committing my code at the end of the day. It's second nature to git add, git commit and git push in the command line now. It wasn't a few months ago. Reminding me of the things I can do now is helping me fight the imposter syndrome. So, syndrome of the imposters, next time you come calling, just remember who stood in your way. Remember every day I ever stopped you, and then, and then, do the smart thing! Let somebody else try first. I've got a trick up my sleeve to deal with you and it's so simple. Laughter.