@datarama That's rough but understandable.

I didn't get diagnosed with dyslexia until adulthood because my pattern-recognition-overdrive masked it. I was sight-reading at a very young age and *reading* constantly and well above my grade level.

But I couldn't spell, and I struggled to recognize grammatical syntax.

That translates into my coding experience. I'm a bit younger than you, but I learned to code on a hand-me-down atari 800. and then later a c64 emulator. BASIC syntax was somehow basic enough that I could hold onto it and write some complicated applications.

I developed an affinity for the process, and decided to pursue it professionally.

I didn't realize until I was much older why I could write BASIC so well, but couldn't get by nearly as well in other languages. I read a lot of "BASIC teaches bad habits" articles about spaghetti code and other bad programming.

I internalized that. BASIC = BAD. I'm better in BASIC than other languages. ME = BAD.

Turns out it wasn't the bad habits, it was the syntax.

So it goes.

I hope you re-discover some joy.