A fantastic essay - and very true!
"If your goal is to get a little bit better every day, you’re constantly monitoring your progress. But your barometer for progress is so screwed up that it becomes extremely discouraging very quickly. This is the point where most people give up."
This second sentence is my favorite in the entire post.
When I started coding 15 years ago, all I cared about was having fun, learning and building something great. All you need is a fun project, emotional ignorance to the peaks and valleys in your perception, and a lot of practice.
This is very different from the current academic approach to teaching people how to code. The projects are usually boring and dull, you start by learning theoretical constructs and what not - instead of experiencing the joy of hacking.
Btw your post reminded me of a few books: - The Talent Code - Talent is Overrated - Outliers
All fantastic books in the field of deliberate practice. Once you learn and internalize the process of deliberate practice, you become free of the emotional burden that comes with learning new stuff.
Like most things, awareness of the pain alleviates it substantially. Your post does a great job at creating awareness.