Worthwhile work is hard

I've read back over the 'hard things are hard' post I wrote a few weeks ago, and realised I didn't properly articulate my thoughts.

Yes, hard things are hard. Work that is worth doing is always going to be hard to accomplish. If it were easy, then more people would do it, and the relative weight of the accomplishment would be less.

That's why I find all these posts on LinkedIn and Twitter going on about how AI is going to make everybody a coder and produce loads of new things a bit disingenuous.

Writing code well is hard. It takes time to learn how to write code well, and it's a skill that people have been working on for decades. Every experienced coder whose opinion I respect has pointed out that AI tools can speed up the easy code generation for those who are used to assembling a well structured app, but AI tools are just that - tools.

When handled properly by an experienced person, they can make great things. In the hands of less experienced people, they usually make a mess - albeit a lot faster - and don't generally produce the outcome you may expect. Sure, they produce lots of code fast, and it may work, but it's most likely full of security holes and is poorly structured, so extending or enhancing it becomes a chore.

Anyway, that's been my experience, and I'm not a coder.

To continue my original point, I have two perspectives on the 'things that are worthwhile are hard':

• Becoming a master of your craft takes a great deal of time.

This time is spent making mistakes and learning what works and what doesn't. There is no shortcutting this process; you have to make the mistakes, feel foolish, take your knocks, and keep polishing before being good at a skill comes naturally. The learning part is difficult. making mistakes over and over again is difficult to deal with, and many people give up at this stage - and that experience of failing over and over again could take years. The only ones who make it are the ones who keep moving forward, acknowledging that they are developing and building the calluses that make them great.

• Acknowledging you are a master is remembering all the hard knocks you took along the way, and being proud of the learning journey.

People who are experts frequently acknowledge that they mess up. I have, and there is one thing I'm consistently good at, but I still mess up from time to time (see post from yesterday, for example). It's impossible to consider yourself a master without acknowledging that you're still going to make mistakes, and you will always be learning. The people what embrace that, acknowledge it, and welcome the continual learning journey are the ones who are the true masters.

Every athelete still trains. Every writer writes all the time - not necessarily their craft, but practicing their craft. Bodybuilders keep training their muscles. Basketball players still practice endlessly.

Experts know that without regular practice, diligence, learning and adapting, they will start to lose their skill.

Things worth doing are very hard to do, and require ongoing work well past the point that you could consider yourself a master.

I'm writing this for myself as much as just getting it out there. I am guilty of becoming complacent and thinking that I know it all, then a minor failing somewhere will bring that ivory tower crashing down as I realise that I didn't practice diligence, and detail, and I missed something I shouldn't. Did I crumble and give up? No. Did I feel pain at making the mistake? Hell yes. Did I learn something and change something to help me overcome that pain? Yes. I needed to.

And recognising that making a mistake, owning it, and vowing to learn from it is the only way to keep moving forward - and that's a hard journey. But it's worthwhile to stay at the top of my game.

Sometimes I might think that what I do has become easy; I've forgotten the hard struggles it took to get there, and the hard work that is necessary to stay on top. When I do that, I slip, and hard work is needed again.

What I should be remembering is that hard work is needed every day to stay polished, and the moment I stop I can no longer call myself an expert.

Things that are worthwhile - such as mastering a skill - are hard to do.