Diary of a Programmer in Crisis

Today I decided to be productive. Opened my laptop. Looked at the code. The code looked back at me. Neither of us understood what was going on.

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Made myself a coffee. Came back.

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Read my own code from yesterday… and honestly I need to have a word with whoever wrote it. Spoiler: it was me.

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Decided not to give up. So I did what any logical person would do: changed random things hoping for a miracle. No miracle happened, but now the error is different. Technical progress.

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Looked for help online. Found an answer from 2012 that said: "nvm fixed it" Thanks, genius of the past. Super helpful.

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Went back to the code to fix a bug. It didn't get fixed. But now there are three new bugs with excellent self-esteem.

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Googled: "why isn't my code working" Google: "you probably did something wrong" Thanks, you're just like that teacher who never explains anything but still judges you.

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Current status: Don't know what I did Don't know why it works (sometimes) And clearly I'm not the same person who started the day

Today I had a real problem. The kind that restarting your laptop doesn't fix (though I tried anyway, just in case).

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The assignment seemed simple. "You just have to make it work…" That sentence should come with a legal warning.

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Started off confident. 10 minutes in I was already questioning my life choices.

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The problem: my code wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. The real problem: I didn't understand what it was supposed to do either.

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Read the theory. Didn't get it. Watched a video. Got it… until I went back to the code.

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At one point I thought: "maybe it's not that hard" Wrong. It's always that hard.

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After several attempts… I got something to work. Not exactly what was asked, but… something.

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I don't know if I learned anything. But now I'm better at recognizing when I'm lost. That counts too, right?

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Current status: * Stable confusion * Self-esteem under maintenance * Hope… in beta

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Day 2 done. Tomorrow I'll probably understand everything. (probably not)

Expectation: I stand up front. Explain everything clearly. The code works perfectly. The teacher nods proudly. My classmates take notes. Someone whispers: "wow… you can tell she knows what she's doing" I smile, humble but powerful.

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Reality: I stand up front. Plug in my laptop. The projector doesn't work.

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2 minutes later… The projector works. My program doesn't.

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"Well… it worked yesterday" The most dangerous sentence in programming.

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I start explaining anyway. I use words like: "basically", "in theory", "more or less" Translation: I have no idea.

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Someone asks a question. I smile. I didn't understand the question.

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I touch something. Everything breaks more. Interesting.

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The teacher looks at me. I look at the screen. The screen betrays me.

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I wrap up saying: "and well… that's the general idea" The idea. Because the execution, clearly not.

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Applause… out of pity.

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Current status: * Survived (technically) * My dignity… under reconstruction * My code… did not

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Day 3 complete. It wasn't successful. But it was… memorable.

Today I had free time. Actual free time. And I thought: "I'm going to make progress on a personal project" Mistake number 1.

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Started off motivated. Opened a new project. Project name: "the-definitive-app-for-real-this-time" This time I meant it.

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10 minutes passed… and I was already picking fonts. Because clearly that was the most urgent thing.

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Then: changed my mind. Didn't like the project anymore. Now I was going to build something better. Simpler. More minimal. More… abandonable.

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Looked for inspiration. Saw amazing projects. Closed everything.

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Went back to my project. Didn't like it.

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Decided to start from scratch. Again.

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Result of the day: * 3 projects started * 0 projects finished * 17 open tabs * 1 mild crisis

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But hey… the project name is really great.

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Current status: motivation unstable ideas infinite execution… under maintenance

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Day 4 done. The project isn't. But the intention was there.

Today it happened. That moment. That instant where everything clicks.

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I was stuck on a feature. Wasn't working out. Didn't understand it. Made no sense. Until… I got it.

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EVERYTHING. All at once. Like my brain just went: "oh, that's what it was"

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And that's when it started.

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Optimized the code. Made it cleaner. Faster. More elegant. And at one point… I looked at it.

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Silence.

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And I felt something. Not sure what it was. Pride? Happiness? Did I… fall in love with my code?

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Because it was beautiful. It worked. It made sense. It was mine.

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Then I thought: "since I'm at it… I can improve it a little more" Mistake.

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Added things. Got excited. Refactored what was already working.

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Spoiler: it stopped working. Didn't save a backup.

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But it doesn't matter. Because now I understand EVERYTHING. (I think)

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At some point… it worked again. Not sure exactly how. But it's not quite the same anymore.

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Current status: * Broken heart (courtesy of my own code) * Confused ego * Toxic relationship with programming

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Day 5 done. Loved my code. Lost it. Got it back. I think.

College moment. For the course PPII – Information Systems Development Oriented to Management and Decision Support (yes, the course name takes up more space than some of my projects), we had to build a decision support application (DSS) as a team. Our mission was to create Anomaly Detected, a system where users could log paranormal phenomena, analyze them, and have tools to decide how credible they were. So far it sounded pretty normal. Mistake. The real paranormal phenomenon was the group project actually working.

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The assignment was split into two parts. The first was playing with datasets. Data cleaning and normalization, analysis and visualization in Tableau. The second was building a full web system. The university called it "part two". I called it "the canonical event".

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The first part was relatively simple. The second one still shows up in my memories whenever I hear the word "deploy".

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Among the four members of the group we split up the tasks for the second part. At first my mission was simple. "You handle the database." Five meetings later I was also doing backend, deploy, documentation... wondering exactly when I agreed to all of that.

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Migrated the database. Set up Supabase. Deployed the project to Render. Then an error showed up. Fixed it. Two more appeared. Clearly bugs work in teams too.

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At one point they told me: "We need to generate a PDF with charts." I thought: "Sure, there's probably a button that says "Export PDF"." Nope. Turns out the charts had to be drawn almost by hand. I didn't study programming to end up negotiating with a circle.

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Then came the deploy. Render decided that running continuously was too much to ask. Every fifteen minutes it went to sleep. I've never related to a server this much.

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Meanwhile, Tableau was showing beautiful charts. I was showing charts too. The ones under my eyes.

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The best part was recording the demo video. Five minutes before, everything worked perfectly. I hit "Record". The project decided to improvise. I think even ghosts had less paranormal activity than my app during that recording. (Luckily the video survived. I'm leaving it below so you don't think I imagined it.)

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Mission accomplished... surprisingly. In the end, Anomaly Detected turned out to be a working decision support application. Users can log phenomena, analyze them, and rely on information to decide how credible each case is. The UFOs never showed up. The bugs did. But against all odds, the project made it to the finish line. Live app: https://anomalydetected.onrender.com

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Technologies that survived with me: PostgreSQL, Supabase, Django, Python, Render, Tableau. All of them remain under observation.

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Current status: 👽 UFOs found: 0 🐞 Bugs found: lost count ☕ Coffees: enough to wake Render up 🎥 Demo video: miraculously recorded 👩‍💻 Me: officially believe more in paranormal phenomena than in group work.

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The real paranormal phenomenon wasn't the UFOs. It was discovering that a programming project also needed: 📋 Roles. 📌 Trello. 📈 Gantt chart. 📝 Logbooks. 📊 Public Tableau dashboard.

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👨‍🏫 Professor: "You're missing the Gantt chart." 👩‍💻 Me: "And when do we write the code?" I'm starting to suspect that if we'd gone one more week, the professor would've asked us to open a branch office.