I was probably in a similar situation with a lot of fellow newcomers. I was always into tech and cool software, so when I first got into programming in high school I thought I’d have a knack for writing these Hello World-esque “apps.” However, as I started taking first-year computer science courses in university, I was in for a reality check as I found out that all these algorithms and lists/pointers stuff don’t come to me as naturally as I’d like it to. With all the other people who were more gifted or qualifiable than me in terms of how fast they could recall these concepts and build pretty-looking apps, I thought that there was no way that I could ever compete in getting a job.
Oh, and another thing, I’ll be the first to admit that I suck at whiteboard interviews. As an obsessive Googler and Stack Overflow-er, I just, for the life of me, can’t even write down some of the syntaxes/algorithms correctly on the spot. It’s usually a hit-or-miss for me — either the interviewer asks a question I happen to memorize the day before on LeetCode, etc., or I fail miserably due to the time pressure.
However, to my surprise, I was still able to eventually land a co-op offer as a software app developer at a startup after several rounds of trial-and-error with around 20 job applications converted into…
