Week 2. Blog Post 1.

 

For the last three days, I have been working on trying to set up the basic environment for the harvesting software that we will be utilizing. Getting yourself familiarized with the software you have never not only used but never even heard of can make you feel quickly intimidated. First, I was asked to install such software as Docker, IntelliJ, OpenJDK, Git, and others. I have never worked with most of them and I kept getting server problems when trying to run my basic SpringBoot projects. I honestly wanted to give up at some point when I got stuck on just the setting the environment part for hours and hours. This situation made me feel "How do you want to be a software developer when you cannot get done basic things with the installation?". I do not think I would have felt that way if I at least got stuck on the bigger problem with the code, but not the installation part.

I felt frustrated and even after a lot of attempts to find error solutions on the internet, I was getting solutions that did not work. It made me feel like the time just got stuck, I was afraid to talk about my results as I have not moved on at all. To tackle this feeling of frustration and stuckness, I decided that I have to approach these obstacles differently. If solutions on the internet did not work and you have tried your best to approach the problem - it is time to seek help from a mentor or co-worker about the issue. I did that and I could fix my problem in 10 minutes. I realized that it is good to try to tackle the error by yourself and helped you learn a lot of things. However, I have realized that I should not overspend time on something just for the seek of "getting it done by MYSELF". I have limited time and there are many more other much more meaningful tasks waiting for me and I cannot spend hours and hours trying to solve a small issue that can be solved in a few minutes if you seek help. I realized that sometimes you have to put off your ego and the mindset of "Getting done by MYSELF" for better productivity on the project.