Title: I&#x27;m around 40 and recently I have been asked to port an API from one language to another. The code I&#x27;m porting is average code, not terrible, but plenty of little things to complain about.<p>I feel like my past self could have handled this task, but I am really struggling. Porting this API will require a deep understanding of the existing API, which, of course, has several layers of abstraction.<p>I can&#x27;t seem to hold more than about 2 levels of call stack in my head. There&#x27;s the entry point function which calls other functions, which call other functions, which call other functions, etc. You know how it is, code calls other code, and logically it forms a tree of calls and return values that often goes several layers deep. I struggle to hold more than about 2 levels of this call stack in my head. By the time I&#x27;m down in the weeds I&#x27;ve forgotten what I&#x27;m doing, what the purpose of the actual API call is.<p>I don&#x27;t know how to break this into small enough chunks that I can understand it or make progress on. Imagine I gave you the code for the sha512 algorithm, and a hash, and asked you to find the pre-image (the input). This is how I feel. Where do I even get started? How do I find even a single chunk of manageable work to break off.<p>The hard part is, several other developers are making progress on porting this API. Why can&#x27;t I? What happened?<p>I don&#x27;t know if this task is just an especially bad fit for me, or if my mental abilities are declining?
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