Do you ever get the feeling that you’re really overcomplicating something but can’t figure out how to make it simpler? It’s a mindset thing for me - like performance anxiety. I have a sneaking suspicion that the problem is much easier than all of the effort I’ve put into it already and if I can just look at it a different way it’s probably simple to solve. I can’t do it though. I get tunnel vision and my creative mind stops working: I have a solution and I’m going to power through it damnit!

And then of course, it all falls apart. I was doing a coding challenge today and was vastly overcomplicating it. I wrote about 8 pages of code and the optimal solution had 8 lines or so (plus helper functions). It was more readable, more organized and followed a saner paradigm than my mess.

Oh well. Coding is better than not coding and every time I code I learn another lesson. Keep grinding.