Thursday Thought: Imposter!

Ever feel like you're struggling to keep up? With anything at all?

I'm feeling a bit of that with APEX right now.

Partially because I've been at a site that is a version or so behind, but who isn't, right?

But those fine specimens on the Oracle APEX team keep producing so many nifty things, I'm finding it increasing difficult to keep up. Same with the database itself. So many great new practical development features in 18.x.

Time to buy?

I'm sure I'm not the only one, and the fact I'm writing this 6 months after I noted the idea kind of illustrates my point. It was spurred a little bit from Tim Hall's post about the little funk he's feeling. Some of the issues he's been feeling resonate with my own. Work has been good and bad, my presentation game is a little off, and I'm not blogging as much. Heck, sometimes I used to schedule a few posts in advance, instead of posting a flurry.

There are a few major factors involved, including, but not limited to:

1. Managing a house containing a little human learning to communicate
   
   
2. Moving house
   
   
3. Needing to work hard to prove what seems blazingly obvious to us - that building enterprise applications with APEX is an advantage.

They're all positives in their own right, just a little disruptive if you're used to having a little extra time to learn on the side.

However, as I'm sure I've moaned before, I miss the writing. The learning process of breaking something down enough to try explain the topic in a blog post - mostly so future me can remember how something worked, then replicate/adopt it for my new problem. "Oracle Things I Got to Remember Not to Forget"
It frees my mind a little, knowing I can let it go because I've noted this resource effectively for the future.

I also like sharing with the community. Let's wreck this together, right? If we're all helping each other, we're all building better applications, we're all pleasing our customers, we're all sustaining our careers.

Point 3 has a richer story I can't share here, but it is still great for learning how to build applications with a rich user experience. I think my UX & logic building is currently on point, but I'm seeing posts from people like Adrian, Morten, & Vincent just killing it, exploring new avenues, doing funky things.

Not that's really been my bag here on my blog, I've always been focussed on practical solutions with any feature available to us. Features that anyone could be using, possibly shown in a way you may not have seen before, or reinforcing and idea you have. So worrying what others are doing just feeds doubt.

So I'd like to tie this rambling back to learning APEX, and whatever funk may be nearby.

I feel my progress using this development tool has shown a reasonable learning curve, punctuated by a few events - such as the availability of the Page Designer, introduction of the Universal Theme, and understanding how to effectively use Dynamic Actions.

And when I use the term punctuated, I mean I might be working effectively with the tools I'm aware for some time, learn a new trick, gain a new feature, then things improve dramatically for a time.

And just as I started to write this post, I found an article (whatever he's selling aside) that really nailed what I was thinking. I recommend the read, by anyone with a career: https://taylorpearson.me/punctuated/

So if you're feeling in a funk, maybe it's just status-quo.
The next interesting development may be just around the corner.

If you still feeling a little of the imposter syndrome, particularly if you're currently working in a small team, I recommend considering the comments on this tweet from tech commentator @SwiftOnSecurity.

Of course, one solution to my problems is less Twitter, but... input.

Happy new year!