Through the Wall
Having spent countless hours as a writer* in another life, the fabled “writer’s block” is something I’ve come to know quite well. And while I’m not sure it has an exact counterpart in the world of programming, in my short time studying the craft I’ve come across a phenomenon that brings up eerily similar feelings. The Wall. We all know it. We all dread it. And unless one magically develops perfect problem solving skills right after graduating from their bootcamp (🤞) we all hit it eventually.
You know you’ve hit The Wall when fixing a certain bug in your code feels more impossible at the moment than solving world hunger. You know you’ve hit The Wall when a build that made perfect sense during planning now looks like a bowl of day old spaghetti from the semi sus bodega on the corner. You know you’ve hit The Wall when you look back over your past few hours of work and wonder where everything went so wrong in your life.
Hitting The Wall never feels good, but you can survive the collision. Presented below are a three simple methods that I used to ease my writer’s block back in the day, that I’ve also found useful in navigating around (or more often straight through) The Wall.
*Term applied very loosely.
Take a Step Back
It sounds simple, but it’s a tried and true go-to. If you find yourself slamming your head off of the same issue over and over again - running code you’re convinced should work but isn’t producing the desired result - the best thing you can do is to just take a step back and collect yourself. Grab a coffee. Go for a walk. Call it a night if it’s getting late.
Once you’ve wound yourself up too tightly over a certain issue, it can be incredibly difficult to parse all the moving pieces of the machine you’re building. Giving yourself a moment to breathe and clear your mind can bring back a sense of calm and clarity that can be hugely beneficial in something as detail intensive as programming.
Phone a Friend
By far one of the most useful methods I found in working through my writer’s block was bouncing ideas off of a friend, and it’s been no different in coding. Sometimes a fresh set of eyes is all you need to reframe your approach to a given issue. I’ve often found that simply explaining my process to someone else is the only thing I need to do to spot the problem. Just talking about something out loud can have a funny way of changing your perspective on it.
Pair programming is another great solution to the issue. If you have an active collaborator on a project, hitting The Wall is a perfect opportunity to pass the wheel over to your partner for a bit. If a new set of eyes is good, a new set of fingers is even better. A task that might feel like a thick cement Wall for you could very well be a quick hop for someone else who isn’t so deep in the muck.
Aim for a Different Wall
There are bound to be many Walls during the course of any given project, and just because you’re stuck on one doesn’t mean you can’t easily fly past another Tokyo Drift style.
Shifting focus to and completing another task can do wonders in clearing up your brain space. Sometimes all you need to fix your state of mind is prove to yourself that you can do it — and solving a problem unrelated to the issue you’re stuck on is a great way to do that. That hit of sweet, sweet dopamine is a great way to get yourself back on track to working past The Wall you’re stuck on.
Are the above methods obvious? Probably. But often times it can be difficult to spot the obvious answers when you’re neck deep in The Wall. Taking a moment away from the keyboard, getting another set of eyes on your code, or shifting focus to a different task are all great ways to clear your mind and bring those obvious answers back into focus.
