Programming is sometimes frustrating. Sometimes you get so frustrated that you start to believe that you are incompetent and should not be programming at all. Looking at the code of other programmers, it is easy to find examples that someone did something better than you.
This is the so-called Impostor Syndrome. It is a warning message from your brain that it is currently overloaded. In other words: "time for a break!".
You should make the Impostor Syndrome a good friend, because it will be with you as long as you program. Even after 30 years, I still come across code I don't understand, problems I cannot solve, programs from seemingly unattainable genius programmers.
But often it turns out that only one or two tricks are missing to achieve something similar. Once you can look back at code you wrote a few weeks earlier, you'll see how far you've come.
The worst thing you can do is to bang your head against the same wall over and over. The main trick is to refocus your brain to look at the situation from another angle. All of the following help your brain switch gears:
- take a break (no, an off-screen break)
- go to sleep
- talk to someone
- read about the tools / libraries / algorithms you are working with
- solve a smaller version of the problem first
- draw a solution on paper