I recently went to the movies to watch Inside Out 2. Despite it being a movie targeted for kids, I think adults (and us software engineers) can get quite a bit out of it as it touches base with a lot of things we go through quite frequently, and something I have gone through recently.

The movie follows Riley, the girl from the previous film if you haven’t already watched it, who has recently turned 13. With that new age comes new challenges and emotions and the movie introduces a few new characters like anxiety, boredom, embarrassment and envy. These other emotions aren’t explored much apart from anxiety which I believe is the emotion we all struggle with the most and one that I’ve had to tussle with for a while. Another new development is the physical manifestation (crystal) of the Sense Of Self. What I found captivating about the movie was the way anxiety was portrayed and the symbolism behind the character. Anxiety was the “antagonist” of the movie and for the most part the driving factor for what led Riley to be less of “herself” and more of this hardened individual whose sole purpose was to fit in. Riley plays hockey and was invited to an ice hockey camp with her friends in hopes of qualifying for her school’s team: The Firehawks.

The new and old emotions clash, Joy thinks Riley should try to have fun at camp, while Anxiety thinks she needs to do whatever she can to make new friends and make the team, and so Anxiety locks Riley’s old emotions (joy, sadness, disgust etc) in the “memory vault” and her reasoning behind this is that Riley needs to do everything she can to be the best and make new friends.

Throughout the movie the new emotions are seen, anxiety in particular, pushing Riley very hard. Riley ends up not getting much sleep and being a jerk to her old friends and doing things to fit in with the Firehawks group in hopes of making friends and making the team. Anxiety assembles a room full of little creatures dedicated to creating drawings that could represent the future that Riley has ahead of her if she does not make the team or if she does not do xyz.

Everything in Inside Out 2 is a metaphysical manifestation of our emotions and what drives us as humans. What I took away from this scene is that this is exactly what we accurately do when we are anxious, we use our imagination to convince ourselves of everything that could go wrong, not what could go right, because anxiety is fueled by the fear of the negative uncertain future. We attempt to predict the future, and try to plan for outcomes that we do not know will ever even occur. But the possibility of it happening is enough for anxiety. The little creatures in that room represent our imagination, anxiety is in control of our imagination right now and taints everything we think of. In the scene anxiety even prompts the creatures to keep the images coming, so she can evaluate all possible outcomes (exactly what we do). So they end up making things completely unrealistic and not even within the constraints of reality, yet this fuels anxiety, because again, the possibility is enough.

I seriously nearly cried during this shit. I have high aspirations and I recently have been putting a lot of pressure on myself to be something, to be someone that makes programs worthy of recognition. Even when I do something good and make progress personally it’s never enough. I have to constantly strive to be something that isn’t even attainable, comparing myself to individuals I don’t even personally know, but despite this, I tell myself that I am not good enough, because if I was I would be able to meet these unrealistic goals and milestones.

I am not good enough.

Programming is a domain that’s incredibly broad, Programming isn’t just one thing but a broad spectrum of different subdomains. There is graphics programming, network programming, Operating System Programming, Web Programming etc. It is very easy for me to get bogged down by all this complexity and divergence and to see any skill which deviates a fraction from my own as someone who has immense innate ability beyond my comprehension and I begin to feel bad. I hear about some kid who never touched programming in his life building an application that in the beginning would have taken me weeks and immediately start asking myself if I’m meant for this, if programming is for me. I start looking on Reddit and other forums to fuel this belief because if I wasn’t born knowing Rust how could I ever be good at using it? I find myself on different degenerate threads about IQ and other crap. Maybe I don’t have the IQ for programming? Maybe the PhD in computer science I strive for isn’t for me, I wasn’t born like the greats. I told myself if I didn’t understand the concept within 4.2 seconds I was an idiot and I’ll never achieve my goals. Programming is hard and I’m just not smart enough for it like others are.

One thing I overlooked was that there are people who have experience which far exceeds my own. I have really only been programming for a little over 2 years. When we compare ourselves to other people we focus only on the outcome that they achieved rather than to think about what they did to achieve it. Some people have simply put in more hours than I have. Talent exists but I’ve come to realize that talent often gets mistaken for hard work and experience. I recently asked someone who I compared myself to a lot how long they have been programming for, and to my surprise they told me 8 years. That is quite a lot more years than me. It made me then think that perhaps the difference in our ability is not some innate characteristic bestowed upon him at birth, but rather the hard work and diligent practice he puts in to perfecting his craft, maybe programming came naturally to him, maybe it didn’t. But all I can say is that I cannot compare myself to someone with 6 more years of experience than me, who has already completed his degree and has worked for many companies.

None of us are geniuses but we can become geniuses of hard work.

As software engineers we need to realize that it takes time to become good and that we can’t control everything, and we need to stop putting so much pressure on ourselves to become great engineers. Don’t be like Riley, ask for help, focus on making friends instead of being the best, I realized a good developer isn’t just good at programming but communication, take breaks, don’t put the weight of your imaginary world on your shoulders, have realistic goals, compare yourself to no one, compare yourself to yourself, are you better than you were yesterday? Yes? That is enough. The only person wanting this much is you, and if it’s someone else tell them to fuck off.