nothing could have prepared me for the emotional difficulty of learning music production. 6+ years in, still oscillating daily between feelings of competence and cluelessness with peaks/valleys way more intense than i& #39;ve experienced with any other creative outlet

people talk a lot about self-doubt and "impostor syndrome" with programming, but honestly as long as your code does what it& #39;s supposed to, doesn& #39;t crash, and other people understand it, it& #39;s already at "professional quality". just so much more objectively measurable and provable

but music isn& #39;t really at professional quality unless it sounds good to you/other musicians/normal people, affects people emotionally, people like it enough to voluntarily seek it out & listen to it etc -- and the path achieving all of those goals is extremely ill-defined