A few weeks ago I received an email, which I'm sharing below with permission.
"I keep making mistakes, and have to go back and fix them again and again and again, and frequently make more mistakes while trying to fix the first mistakes. You never seem to screw up in any of your streams. How many more years until I get to that point?"
I've mildly edited it to be a bit less sweary, but I think you get the point! It took me until yesterday to reply (sorry, I recently moved house!), but I'm going to share my reply with you all below in case it helps you too.
First, congratulations on making mistakes! I know that sounds odd, but often we get so focused on not making mistakes that we forget mistakes are part of everyone's journey – trying things out, getting them wrong, and learning lessons from that experience is a fantastic way to learn, and it's even true that sometimes the only way to figure out what's right is to see what's wrong first.
One of my favorite Steve Jobs videos is him responding to a rather aggressive crowd question about some of his choices on returning to Apple. Towards the end, he says "some mistakes will be made along the way, and that's good, because at least some decisions will be made along the way." So, as hard as it might be, be happy that you're making mistakes, because it shows you're pushing yourself outside your comfort zone and learning something new.
Second, you have no idea how many mistakes I've made over the years. Lots of small ones, sure, but dozens – hundreds? – of really serious errors, some of which I'm going to regre...
https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/271/making-mistakes-while-learning-swift
