Some years ago, I heard Kent Beck at a conference say that he felt tremendous impostor syndrome when he started working at Facebook.

“Kent Beck?” I said to myself, “feels impostor syndrome?!!”

Made me feel a lot better about my own bouts of dealing with it.

Anyway, his latest post on tackling complexity is just brilliant. Please give it a thorough read:

What really slows me down is not programming slowly, it is getting overwhelmed, losing my confidence, and not programming at all.

I want to be a genius programmer. I ought to be able to handle this. This time it’s different. Then I look up, realize I’ve been two hours without green tests, revert, take a walk, sit down, and go back to eating one bite at a time.