Problem solving is one, i'm a great problem solver, but think that there's more to web dev than being able to do this, to do this well you need to be able to write down each attempt you've made and what else you could do to solve the problem, it's often too confusing to be able to do this and too easy to take the easier approach of not writing your attempts down leading to confusion. Google helps, but often taking someone elses code seems like a dirty way to solve it, you also have to modify it so it works with your code, this is hard when your not understanding their code.

I find often understanding someone elses code to be very hard when they have so many divs that make no sense, because of this you don't know what element is best to work with, what does what etc

<div id="main" class="site-main">
  <div id="primary" class="content-area">
		<div id="content" class="site-content" role="main">
			<article id="post-31" class="post-31 page type-page status-publish hentry">

These four divs cover the same area and seemingly do the same thing, so how do I get an understanding of what each one does? Is it actually necessary to have 4 tags that seemingly do the same thing?

. And it's only really testable on their site, you couldn't just take the code away and test it on it's own, you need to update the site each time which is tedious - this is usually where I get fed up and just quit. I also find that too many divs that seem trivial/do nothing and petty can p*** me off. I guess you could always hide the element in web inspector to know what it does, even then it's not always obvious what these random divs do.

Knowing how to code and what the elements do is the easy bit, you don't even have to memorize when you can use a cheat sheet here. If you understand the language and it's functionality underneath the code, you can get a general idea of what things do, so only have to use the cheat sheet.

Also, when you get stuck with a undoable problem it can be a huge blow on your confidence, this is the most painful thing about web dev, what do you do in these situations? I find half the time, i'll eventually be able to understand and do it, but not straight away, other times you just can't solve the problem, this is where you brute force the problem (BUT it's hard to know what options you have to solve the problem, especially if the code is hard to understand/confusing). Some problems take me hours, some problems I could take a month and still be stuck not being able to understand at all - at college it was like this, other people could solve the problem though.

Another thing I find a pain in the arse is all the new frameworks, you learn one then another one comes out which has new trivial features, the technology is always changing.

Being able to keep your cool and not let hard challenges knock your confidence is key, the trivia and endless errors in web dev can drive you mad. Also - keeping your code clean and not confusing is very key, I am very guilty of this, the project becomes a mess.

Edited November 25, 20187 yr by NullDrone

You say those 4 divs do the same thing.  How do you come to that conclusion?  The only similarity between them is that they are all divs.  They all have different classnames, id's.  One should be a `<main />` tag it seems.

Aside from that the hardest part of being a dev is very subjective and dependant on the person.  Right now the hardest bit for me is time management.