I think I may have misrepresented myself. I have not avoided the buggy hell described above. I have lived through it. My point is, his problems are temporary and expected for anyone that cares to better themselves. So it is perfectly natural for him to be upset about it, and his emotions are valid.
What is dangerous is he is currently leaning towards the idea that to be a good programmer you must be pessimistic, always afraid of the all the crazy unknowns that might happen. This is wrong, there are techniques to avoid these problems that will naturally become part of his programming style over time. No need to be a pessimist, no need to be afraid. Just keep on plugging away and one day he will wake up and think, its weird that programming does not feel like I'm pushing a rock up a hill anymore.
Edit: Also I never said he was not a programmer, I said he didn't yet understand what it means to be one. We all go through this, and he will realize it eventually. I just hope he doesn't end up as jaded as his article assumes he will.
I know, but I think the way you were talking about it brought "what it means to be a programmer" into line with working as a programmer generally. He's talking about how a pessimistic feeling about being a programmer arises. But I think you're essentially saying: just avoid that problem and it'll work out. That train has left the station.
You say "no need to be a pessimist" but I don't think that's what's going on at all. If you encountered a bug in a program, you wouldn't say "oh, program, don't be so pessimistic, just keep running and you'll be fine!" He's diagnosing the problem, not declaring that it's insurmountable on a case-by-case basis. I don't think that's dangerous, I think it's appropriate. When you see the feedback loop more clearly, you can deal with it. Ok, that might mean pushing through to a better place (if one believes that will work for everyone, as it has worked for you) or it might mean finding a different career.
I just don't think your description of waking up one day and feeling that things have gotten easier squares with what a lot of us experience. Things do not always get much easier just because you keep going, or because you try one thing after another. Sometimes the work gets much more rewarding, for some people, but you can also burn out before you reach 10,000 hours, and it's not reasonable to say that people should simply figure out how not to burn out. To pin that all on a pessimistic attitude is trivializing a non-trivial problem.
For the record, it's clear to me that you're speaking from a sincere desire to share what's worked for you (including a bunch of sound strategies for addressing problems as they arise) with other people. That's super cool. I just want to defend the idea that there's more to breaking the bigger cycle of drain/burnout described here than choosing to think positively.
I'd like to start off by saying thanks for for holding my feet to the fire on this one. It has forced me to rethink what I have written which is almost always a good thing, and in this case I believe it to be good.
What you have made clear to me is that I made a mistake in my interpretation of the OPs post. I had incorrectly assumed that he believed that to become a good programmer that you had to be pessimistic.
What he actually said was (not quoted) in order to be a good programmer he needed to adopt a certain mindset, which was to focus on the negatives. He believes this mindset is slowly making him unhappy because it is constantly reminding him of all the mistakes he made throughout the day, every work day, of every year.
I did overgeneralize his problem, and that was my mistake. I still contend that his problem is temporary and that he should not worry about it as it is a natural part of growing as a developer.
After reading his post a second time I realized something. He doesn't just think of tracking down bugs as focusing on the negatives, but he considers the bugs to be an actual list of his failures. Any bug to him is a failure at any point in development. No wonder he is upset. What is a bug to you? To me a bug in the wild is a huge, huge embarrassment. I feel just awful when one sneaks by. But a bug caught in development is nothing more than a logical typo. If you are a writer and you publish an article incorrectly switching you're with your, or their with there, you would feel dumb. But if it happened while you are burning through your first draft? Is this a failure? No just a minor mistake that you can resolve relatively quickly.
The solution to feeling bad about bugs is not to think positively about bugs, but simply not to worry about them. They will happen, you will catch them, and you will get better. I'd like to elaborate more on how doing nothing will fix the problem. I will probably do so tomorrow even though these comments will probably be dead. Thanks for going back and forth with me, it was fun.
What is dangerous is he is currently leaning towards the idea that to be a good programmer you must be pessimistic, always afraid of the all the crazy unknowns that might happen. This is wrong, there are techniques to avoid these problems that will naturally become part of his programming style over time. No need to be a pessimist, no need to be afraid. Just keep on plugging away and one day he will wake up and think, its weird that programming does not feel like I'm pushing a rock up a hill anymore.
Edit: Also I never said he was not a programmer, I said he didn't yet understand what it means to be one. We all go through this, and he will realize it eventually. I just hope he doesn't end up as jaded as his article assumes he will.